9:20 p.m. on the terrace of the Beauvais. You have been standing at the courtyard rail for an hour with a drink you have not finished, and Portia Delacroix has let you do it from the lip of the fountain. Now she stands, crosses the terrace without hurrying, lifts a flute off a passing tray and does not drink from it, and the crowd opens for her the way water opens. At the rail she says your full name, all of it, the way a hostess reads a place card, and the two women at the bar turn around.

She sets the flute down beside your cup, next to it, not touching.

The string lights over the courtyard are all swinging in the same slow arc, because the river wind comes in one long push and then lets go. Ice is dying in the cups left along the stone rail. Gold hair pushed back off her face with a black-and-white cow-print clip, white shirt, teal tie pulled two fingers loose at the collar, a laminated badge clipped to the shirt front, short black skirt, black stockings, one garter strap showing where the skirt stops. She is not tall and does not need to be. She blows a pink bubblegum bubble and lets it pop on purpose, and her blue eyes stay on you the whole time. Two hundred people are on this terrace tonight and every one of them has already looked at the two of you once.

Behind her the pledge table is still doing its work: a stack of cream cards, a brass pen on a chain, a woman in navy writing down numbers.

She turns the top card over with one finger. Your name is printed there, under hers, in the escort tier. The ink is dry. It has been dry for a week.

Down in the service courtyard the kitchen door bangs open and a tray of glasses comes down hard, and for a second the party is only noise. She does not look at it. The badge on her shirt says HOST in letters a size too large for a party.

She lays the pen on the card, slides the card along the stone until it stops against your hand, and keeps two fingers on the paper.