David and Claire Sanborn walked together, arm in arm, down Willow Brooke Road. It was early December, and the night was bitterly cold. A biting wind whistled over the barren tree tops, and the night sky was almost starless. Spare, dead leaves blew across the street, crunching beneath Claire’s high heals. She was tall, taller than her husband, and although still thin, she’d gained weight in her shoulders and her thighs since the first Willow Brooke Christmas party the couple had attended three years ago. Her blonde hair was pulled up, and she had recently quit dyeing it, deciding to slip into middle age gracefully and greyly.

David walked quickly to keep up with the longer legs of his wife. He looked down, to keep his face out of the wind, and followed her calves, which were bare beneath a knee-length black skirt. He wondered, as he did whenever they went out, how she could walk so skillfully in shoes so dangerously thin. He was in a pair of khakis with a button down blue shirt and a beige jacket, his shirt tucked in loosely to hide the paunch that appeared annually around the holidays. His maple hair was still thick and only slightly spackled with grey. Tonight he wore glasses, his eyes worn out from sleeping in contacts the night before.

Together, David and Claire were approaching forty with something they thought resembled grace. While friends of theirs were divorcing, or purchasing lavish beach homes, or simply sleeping around, the two had stayed at least balanced, if not happy. They’d moved out here, to the Philadelphia suburbs, three years ago on July fourth, one year to the day after David’s father died. David had a job now, teaching photography classes at the high school, and Claire was contemplating opening her own law firm. The year before they’d taken a vacation to New Zealand, their first big trip since their honeymoon to Europe nearly fifteen years ago. Their children were nearing adolescence with a similar poise: Matthew, despite his father’s objections, was playing football, and, with his father’s help, was the starting point guard on his sixth grade basketball team. Christina was singing in the choir and, along with her mother, was taking violin lessons. Life, both David and Claire often found themselves thinking, was good.

This year, the Christmas party, which rotated houses each December, was being held in a house down the hill from the Sanborn’s place. They were friends, albeit casually, with the hosts. Diane and Hubert Laramey were older than the Sanborns, as were most couples in the neighborhood. Diane, who was robust in every sense of the word, worked at a bank and Hubert ran, with his father, a construction company that had been in the family for three generations. The Sanborns arrived at their house, a three story Victorian home with wreaths in the front windows and a well manicured yard lined by rose bushes. All the lights in the house, it appeared, were on. A few cars were parked outside, but the Sanborns figured they would be one of the first couples there.

David knocked, a bottle of Merlot in one hand and a bottle of Cabernet beneath his arm. Claire stood at his side, a plate of crab cakes balanced skillfully in one hand. Few people knew she’d been a waitress through out law school, and even David had only learned after the fact, and then accidentally. Her white blouse whipped in the wind, clinging to her large chest. With her free hand, she brushed hair out of her face and then placed it on the small of her husband’s back. Diane opened after the second knock. Her large cheeks were flushed, her nose abnormally small for her big face. Her eyes were huge and blue. She seemed perfect as a hostess.

“Oh come in, come in!” she said, ushering them into the well-lit foyer, a pot of poinsettias resting on a mantle to the Sanborns’ left. She took the wine from them and hurried through the living room into her dining room, where a large oak table was set with a bouquet of tulips and roses in the middle. To the side, on a buffet, there were already a half dozen bottles of wine, two on ice, and a bucket filled with beer.

“You can just put that dish down right there, next to the cheese and crackers,” Diane said, setting the wine down. She rushed over again, and hugged David first, kissing him on the cheek. “Oh, it’s so good to see you both of you. I’m thrilled you could make it,” she said as she reciprocated the kiss on David’s cheek with one on Claire’s.

“Wouldn’t miss it,” David said. “Free food and free booze and good company, how can you pass that up?”

Diane gave him a motherly smile, her hair messy and almost entirely grey even though she was only seven years older than him. Claire gave her husband a bemused look. She looked, David thought, particularly elegant with the grey in her temples and streaked in her bangs. He had found, in recent years, an overwhelming new attraction to his wife, as if he were discovering her anew. And, as she acquired new curves and wrinkles, in a sense he was.

“Well,” Diane said, breaking in, “it’s so wonderful you’re both here. Please, help yourself to some wine.” She motioned towards the drinks, about two dozen glasses set up next to the beer. David opened a bottle of Shiraz on ice, and poured three glasses.

“Where is everyone?” Claire asked.

“Oh, Hubert is out back with Paulie, Charles and Alan, having a cigar. I don’t know how, it’s so cold out.”

“It is,” David said. “So much for global warming, huh?”

Diane smiled. “Yes, it would seem winter is finally here. I don’t know, I always like the first few weeks, when it just gets cold. I find it refreshing.”

“Me, too,” Claire said. “And it’s always wonderful when it first snows. I’ve always told David I wanted to rent a place in New England some year so I could wake up to real snow, like I had back in Wisconsin.”

David smiled and excused himself, leaving the women to talk amongst themselves. He grabbed a crab cake on the way, which he had bought three hours before from the super market, and popped it into his mouth as he walked through the kitchen and out to the back porch. Outside, he coughed, a haze of thick smoke obscuring a group of men laughing garishly and nasally, the way older men always do. He walked through the smoke, and on the other side found four men bundled in heavy leather coats sitting around a patio umbrella, cigars dangling from their mouths.

“Ah, Dave!” Hubert said, standing to shake his friend’s hand. He was short, like his wife, with a wide neck and a cleft chin, his face seeming to slide downwards towards his broad shoulders. “I’m glad you came.”

“Good to see you,” David said, blowing into his hands.

“Do you know everyone here?” Hubert asked.

“I don’t know. Some faces look familiar.”

“Well,” Hubert began, turning to the table, “let me introduce you. The man across from me,” he said, pointing, “is a real tough son of a bitch, Paul Verzano. What he does, only he knows. But he’s a good man to have on your side. To his right is Charlie Masterson, a partner from work. And lastly, Alan Wellstone.” Wellstone was the only small man in the group, starkly thin and with a face that seemed as long as half his torso. “He does something with money, accounting or that shit. No one understands it but Alan, and I guess that’s why he’s the richest of all of us.”

Alan laughed, coughing out a plume of smoke. “Pleased to meet you,” he said, extending his hand across the table.

“You, too. David Sanborn,” David said.

“Like the saxophone player?” Alan said.

David chuckled. “Yeah, guess so.” The other men shook his hand as well. Paul’s arms, thick even beneath the coat, seemed to bulge as he squeezed David’s hand. Charlie wore thick glasses, his hair big and deeply orange. He looked nothing like a man in construction, David thought. David pulled up a seat and sat down, sipping his wine and feeling like a student sitting in with his professors. He quickened the pace with which he drank, the Shiraz slightly peppery in his throat, warming it from the dry winter air.

Inside, more people arrived. Claire helped Diane take coats up to the third floor, into an empty children’s bedroom. “Your house is so beautiful,” Claire said.

“Aw, thank you sweetheart,” Diane said. “It was filthy, and I finally got Hubert to take time off and help me earlier this week. This was his idea, after all, to host the party.”

“Really?” Claire asked. “Wow, I’d have to lie to David until the house was full of people.”

Diane laughed. “I know, I was surprised, too. I always badger him about how it’s so lonely down here, how we need to have more people over. We used to have a lot of friends when we were younger, when we first moved in, but a lot of them moved out or just lost touch. You know how that goes,” she said, dropping the coats and spinning around, back towards the twisting, labyrinthine stairwell that connected all three floors of the house.

Downstairs, they found more people in the foyer, shaking the cold from them like a fever. There were two couples, the lesbians who lived across from David and Claire, one much older than the other. The younger one, Claire had always thought, was quite beautiful, with short black hair and a compact face with brown eyes and a sharp nose, and, of course, shapely hips which tonight she showed off in a flowing, pastel skirt. She had, Claire had to admit, wonderful hips, and they gave her an almost overpowering sense of confidence, an undeniable sensuality. Her husband agreed, but because she reminded him of a girlfriend from high school.

The other couple were in their early sixties and lived somewhere on the street behind the Sanborn’s house. Claire had seen him, with his lanky arms and top hat, walking his greyhound from time to time.

Claire started to gather coats again, but Diane stopped her. “Dear, this is my party, not yours. Go enjoy yourself.”

Claire smiled.

“Thank you, though. But I’ll be fine,” Diane said. And with that she was off, disappearing quickly around a bend in the stairs, the whole house creaking under her weight. Claire turned back to the newly arrived guests. The older couple had walked across the room after handing off their coats, towards the wine. Claire smiled uncomfortably, but then the woman with the hips and the flowing skirt laughed.

“Claire, right?” she said.

“Yes. I’m sorry, I forget your name.”

“It’s fine. Erin. And this is my partner, Rose.” Rose was much shorter than Erin, and seemed more reserved, her small, brown eyes nervously darting around the room. She had white hair, straightened and down to her shoulders, covering her ears. She extended a timid hand and shook Claire’s.

“Your dress,” Claire said to Erin. “It’s beautiful. I really love it.”

Erin smiled, her teeth almost abnormally straight and white. She held the smile for a moment, and Claire glanced away, to Rose. “Thank you,” Erin said then. “I made it myself, actually.”

Claire looked back at her, eyeing up the skirt once more, the fabric diaphanous and a mosaic of pinks, lime greens, yellows, and blues. “Wow, it’s really wonderful. I’ve always wished I’d learned to sew.”

“My grandmother taught me when I was younger, ” Erin said. Almost instinctively, Rose grabbed Erin’s hand. Claire smiled.

“Well,” she said. “Why don’t we get some wine?”

“That’d be nice,” Erin said, and she and her lover followed Claire through the throng of people that had gathered in the living room around the fire place, and into the dining room.

In the kitchen, David had come inside, his clothes still reeking of cigar smoke. His glass was almost empty, but before he could finish it he ran into the husband and wife who lived three houses down. David had coached their son in little league two summers ago.

“Jacob,” David said.

“David. How are you?” the man said, his head bald except for two strips of white on both sides.

“I’m well. How are you? How’s Ben?”

“I’m well, too. And Ben is doing great, started center field this summer on a traveling team.”

“Really? He was good. I’m sure that was exciting.” David remembered that Ben had been an ok fielder but couldn’t hit even the slowest of eleven year old pitching.

“It was. Oh, David, you remember my wife, Catherine, don’t you?” He motioned to the woman his arm was wrapped around. She was short and slender, shapeless like a pre-teen girl, but with incandescent green eyes, long blonde hair, and a face that, even un-made up, was creaseless. David was confident she had had work done. He was also confident she was far too beautiful for Jacob Berkowitz.

“I do. It’s a pleasure,” David said.

She smiled, disinterested.

“So I hear you’re teaching over at the high school now?” Jacob said.

“Yes, yes I am.”

“When did that start?”

David thought for a moment. “I started subbing last October, I think. And then, when Mr. Allen died, they offered me the full time position. I guess that was in April.”

“You enjoy it?” Jacob asked.

David thought for a moment. Most people in the neighborhood didn’t know that, until teaching, he had been out of work since college. Almost no one knew he painted.

“As much as I would enjoy any job, yeah,” he finally said. Jacob looked at him quizzically. Jacob, David had heard, did something in stocks and always struck David as the type of person who valued work, and work ethic, highly when judging a person. He continued: “Well, I mean, the kids can be a pain in the ass. But when things turn out well, when someone takes a photo that’s really beautiful, it’s a worthwhile feeling.”

Jacob nodded, seemingly satisfied with David’s response. “What do you do again?” David asked. “I’m sure you told me at this thing last year. My memory,” he waved his hand about erratically. He was starting to feel drunk; he’d had a martini before coming over. “It’s not what it used to be.”

Jacob laughed. “I know what you mean.” He sipped his beer, a Corona. “Well, I’m a broker downtown. I worked in New York for a while. It’s where we met,” he smiled at his wife, who smiled back from over her glass of wine. She looked less than interested. “But, I’m from Lower Merion, and I wanted to come back, closer to home. So, here we are.”

“Wow, that’s great,” David said. He knew nothing about stocks. His wife once tried to explain to him, she owned a few he thought, but he hadn’t retained any of it. “I’m sure the money’s good.”

Jacob smiled, shrugging his shoulders. “It pays the bills.”

David laughed. “As my wife likes to remind me, that’s the important thing.” He sipped his wine, only a few drops still in the bottom of the glass. The conversation seemed dead, and David scanned the rest of the room, peering down a hallway, looking for his wife. He did not see her. He looked back to Jacob, who was staring at something outside, scratching his bald forehead. David gulped the last of his wine, and then held his glass up.

“Well, I need a refill. Jake, it was nice seeing you. I imagine we’ll talk later.” He extended his hand, smiling. Jacob looked back, and forced a smile of his own, taking David’s hand.

“Yeah, I’m glad we ran into one another. If you ever need any advice on the market, give me a call.”

“Absolutely,” David said, then walked into the next room, confident he would not be calling Jacob Berkowitz for financial advice. In the dining room, where a Christmas tree sat in the corner closest to the kitchen, and farthest from the wine, David found his wife with a group of women. All of them, save Claire, were at least fifty, wrinkled hands cradling the thin spines of their wine glasses. All of them, save Claire, were laughing. As David approached his wife from behind, he knew she was telling a story, her head bobbing back and forth, her hands gesticulating wildly at her sides, nearly spilling wine on the carpet. He slipped his arm around her waist, and she turned, surprised.

“Oh, sweetheart, we were just talking about you.”

“Wonderful,” he said, grinning falsely. He grabbed her hand behind his back, squeezing it. She quickly let go.

“Yeah, about last year, with the tree. When you tried to put the angel on top and the whole thing fell on you.” She laughed, rather obnoxiously David thought before taking a drink. The rest of the women, none of whom David knew, chuckled, out of breath it seemed, their cheeks rosy.

“It was certainly a harrowing experience. Thankfully we hadn’t put any ornaments on the thing yet, or it might really have been ugly.”

“Oh dear,” a woman, whose whole face sagged, snorted. “That would have been awful.”

“I might still be in the hospital,” David said. His wife tilted her head towards him and smiled before bringing her glass to her mouth, tilting her head back and dramatically draining its contents.

“Well,” she said. “I need a refill.” The other women laughed, David thought, rather too politely. She looked again at David. “Sweetie, would you mind getting me another glass? Something red, I don’t care what.”

David smiled, unhappily. Claire did not notice. “Sure,” he said. He took the glass from her. “Something red.” He walked away as his wife started talking again. She was, David knew, already quite drunk. At the wine table, David waited as an attractive young woman in white pants and a red sweater filled a glass with Merlot. She lived somewhere down the road from David, married to an undertaker, he remembered. She had, sometime last year David had heard, been involved in affair with Jacob, a fact which Mrs. Berkowitz seemed not to mind and which the undertaker had been thoroughly unaware of. David found himself feeling uneasy; a man spends all his time with the dead, he thought, only to lose his wife to a bald stock broker.

Finally, the woman, whose face was rough and less attractive than David had hoped, walked away, not so much as glancing at David. He set his two glasses down, and surveyed the dozen or so bottles. Three were open: the merlot, a shiraz, and a chardonnay. For himself, he picked the shiraz again, pouring a considerable amount to just beneath the brim. For his wife, he poured the merlot, not quite filling the glass halfway. He sipped his shiraz, a healthy amount. The peppery aftertaste tingled in the back of his throat. He immediately replaced the wine he had just drunk.

As he turned to walk back to Claire, David saw a man standing off the left of the table, holding a half full Miller Lite. He was short and, David thought, schlumpy. His hair was curly and brown and looked wild, overgrown, as if the man had been on a deserted island. His eyes were dark and surrounded by bags. The rest of his face was unlined but looked remarkably old, his cheeks puffy. He wore a coat jacket much too big in the shoulders, and his black trousers hung over his shoes. He stood alone, and David approached him. He was not sure why.

“Hi,” David said, holding up his wife’s glass of wine.

The man looked up, he had been looking at the ground, and almost smiled. His lips were cracked. “Hi,” he said, his voice soft.

“David Sanborn. I don’t think we’ve met.”

“Seymour Barrow,” the man said.

“Nice to meet you,” David said. “I’d shake your hand, but my wife had me run a little errand.”

Seymour looked down again and smiled.

David shrugged. “Part of being a husband, I guess.”

Seymour looked up again. “Yep.”

David stood for a moment, expecting him to say more, but Seymour said nothing else. David rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. “So where do you live?” he asked.

“I’m in 226 Willow Grove. By the creek. The house with green shudders.”

David nodded. He knew the house. Willow Brooke was a neighborhood broken into two subdivisions: the original houses, built in the late eighteen hundreds for the paper mill nearby, and a later batch, built sometime in the fifties or sixties, clearly influenced by the Levittown movement. The mill houses, which David thought slightly outnumbered the Levittown houses, were easy to distinguish by their visible wooden trusses. They reminded David of German cottages. Seymour lived in a mill house; David and Claire did not.

“We’re over at, uh,” David thought for a moment, “208 Willow Brooke. Up the hill.”

Seymour nodded.

“Actually, have you met my wife? Claire Sanborn?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“She’s around. If you run into an obnoxious blonde going grey at the temples who just won’t shut up, that’s her.” David cringed immediately at his characterization of his drunken wife. He took another sip of wine. “So what kind of work do you do?”

“I’m a research technician,” he said.

David nodded and pursed his lips. “I have no idea what that is,” he said.

“Well, actually I’m an assistant to a research technician. Basically, we work for drug companies, find new drugs.” He spoke softly and timidly, his voice barely audible above the din of the party. David leaned in to hear.

“Wow,” David said, perhaps a bit too enthusiastically. “That’s fascinating. So, you discover the stuff that we take for colds and headaches?”

“Kind of,” Seymour said. “I really just help out.”

“Still,” David said. “That’s really great work it sounds like.”

Seymour smiled. “What do you do?”

“I’m a teacher, over at the high school. But I’m a painter at heart.”

“A painter?”

“Yes, a painter. My wife always told me I picked a dying art to excel at. She was right, unfortunately,” David said. He expected something more, perhaps an inquiry into what kind of paintings he did, but Seymour just nodded. David once again felt the conversation dying, despite his best efforts. He looked over his shoulder. “Speaking of my wife, she’s probably looking for me. I’m sure I’ll talk to you later.” Seymour smiled courteously and David waved a wine glass in his direction; he had already forgotten his name.

The party reached its zenith shortly after midnight. Those early to arrive had long ago lapsed into drunkenness, and now the late comers were finally joining them. Diane Laramey hurried about, checking up on everyone, making sure no one had an empty glass and that everyone felt comfortable in her house. Her husband carried a garbage bag, chucking spare paper plates and empty bottles into it, looking entirely exhausted and overwhelmed. Every seat in the house was taken, and it had become extremely difficult to move from room to room. The place was clogged with people. Claire Sanborn felt as if she were back in college.

She was well onto her fifth- or was it sixth?- glass of wine. She had not seen David in quite sometime, but she wasn‘t really trying to find him. He was always so clingy at parties. He was nearly forty, and yet he still acted as if he were twenty whenever they went out in public, always putting his arm around her, or holding her hand. It was if he expected her to run off with someone if he didn’t make it clear she was with him.

Claire was in the living room, resting on the arm of a white leather couch, her legs crossed at the ankles. She was talking with three other women. Heidi, one of the only other young women at the party, was an elementary school teacher, and very active in her church. She was short and thick, with a round face and searing green eyes. Her blonde hair was cropped short and tight to her skull. She was Catholic, had been her whole life, and was appalled to learn that Claire and David did not belong to a church. It was, Claire tried to explain, David’s fault. He’d been brought up an agnostic and had since become a full blown atheist. Claire had been a Lutheran, back in Wisconsin, but ever since moving out here with David, she’d been unable to find a congregation. She did not mention that she had not looked very hard.

The other two women Claire talked with were tall and lanky, sisters in their sixties who had grown up in the area. The oldest, Gretchen, had always lived in the region and had never worked a day in her life. Her husband was a doctor. The youngest, Gloria, had lived in California. When her husband died, she moved back east and began working as a nurse. Gloria had steel grey eyes and, remarkably, deep black hair. Her features were more decisive than her older sister’s, her nose pointed, her chin sharp. Gretchen was less defined, her face more square, almost manly, her chin rounded and broad, her nose wide. Her hair was entirely white.

The sisters, who were now neighbors, happened to be very in touch with the personal lives of nearly everyone in the neighborhood. They gossiped for some time. Jacob Berkowitz, they said, had lost his job. His wife, who Gretchen always thought was just with him for the money, was apparently conducting an affair, and quite openly, with a former colleague of Jacob’s. She was likely going to leave him. The Holmes’, a middle aged couple with a daughter in college, were expecting another child, much to the horror of their friends. And the Addis’, an attractive couple in their forties who were both lawyers, were writing up a divorce. He, it turns out, had been sleeping with his high school sweetheart for the past six years. They even had a cabin together in the Pocono’s.

Claire ooh’ed and ah’ed at the appropriate moments, but she was starting to feel tired. Her throat was sore, her voice hoarse. Her body felt heavy. Her head ached, and her eyes were blurry with alcohol. For a time she looked past the sisters, into the other room. She saw Erin, her arm around Rose, talking with the Addis’, who had shown up, smiling and arm in arm, despite the impending dissolution of their marriage. At one point Erin looked over and smiled, her face flushed. She fanned her neck and Claire laughed. She was definitely too drunk.

David saved his wife from the sisters. He stepped up to his wife’s side and kissed the top of her head. She leaned back and, drunk, kissed him, firmly on the lips. When she turned away, she felt his hand rub the crown of her head.

“David,” Gloria said. “Who is that man in the dining room you were talking with, the short, fat fellow?” She motioned towards the wine, where Seymour was still standing, looking nervous and talking with an elderly couple. David had just stopped by for another glass, and briefly discussed his paintings with Seymour.

“Actually,” David said. “I can’t remember his name.”

“Hm,” Gloria thought out loud. “Well, I took care of his wife this summer. She died in October. But he was rarely around. I never caught his name, either.”

“His wife died?” David said, surprised.

“Yes, cancer. It was awful, she was such a nice woman. Beautiful, too.”

“That’s so sad,” Claire said. Gloria nodded, not looking particularly saddened. “Honey,” she said, looking up at David. “You wouldn’t be at a party if I died, would you?”

He laughed, still looking at Seymour. “Of course not, sweetheart. But don’t go dying on me.”

Gloria and Gretchen smiled. “You two are so happy together,” Gretchen said. “It’s a nice thing to see, especially with everyone else being so miserable it seems. Can you believe it? Three affairs this year, and two separations it looks like!”

“It’s truly awful,” Heidi said, finally chiming in. “No one believes in family anymore.”

Claire yawned, quickly covering her mouth. David had moved his hand downwards, now caressing the back of her neck. She shrugged away from him, standing. “Excuse me ladies,” she said. “I need to visit the girl’s room.”

“Oh, of course. It was so nice talking with you Claire,” Gloria said.

Claire smiled. “You, too. I’m sure I’ll be back shortly. I just need to stretch my legs.” She took her husband’s hand. “I’ll be back in a little bit, ok?”

“Ok,” he said.

Then Claire dropped his hand, and pushed her way through the crowd. Her legs wobbled slightly, and she tipped uneasily to her left before righting herself. She slipped past a group of older men, their shoulders broad. A group of middle aged women stood in the foyer, wearing coats, bundled for the cold and ready to leave, waiting for their straggling husbands. Claire found her way to the stairs and grabbed the railing, guiding her feet up the stairs. On the second floor, she found the bathroom door closed. She waited for a moment before a man emerged, smiling embarrassedly. She smiled back, but averted her eyes and stepped into the bathroom, closing the door gently behind her and flicking the light switch on. She set her glass down on top of the toilet and pulled the pins out of her hair, letting it fall to her shoulders. She turned the water on, rinsing her hands under it, splashing her face. She found a hand towel and dried her hands. Then, she placed the hair pins in the trash and walked back outside, hitting the light on her way.

Outside, Erin was waiting by the stairwell. “Oh, Claire,” she said. “Hi.”

Claire smiled, her cheeks still moist. “Hi,” she said. Erin’s skirt had come somewhat undone, revealing her knees.

“I hope I’m not bothering you,” Erin said. “It’s just so warm downstairs. I needed to get away for a minute, catch my breath,” she said. “Plus,” she added. “I think I’ve had a bit too much wine.” She laughed.

“Me, too,” Claire said. “I’ve already got a head ache.”

“Wine hangovers are the worst,” Erin said. “They’re all I get anymore. Don’t you hate how once you get old all you ever drink is wine?”

Claire laughed. “We’re not that old, are we?”

“No, of course not,” Erin said, smiling. Claire looked at her and then away, sipping her wine. “So what kind of work do you do, Claire?”

“I’m a lawyer,” she said.

“Really? What kind of law?” Erin asked, leaning back against the wall. Her hair was tousled.

“Environmental, actually,” Claire said. “I was a biology major for undergrad. But then I decided I wanted to go to law school.”

“Why, if I can ask?”

“Because I met David and knew I’d need to make money,” she said, smiling. Erin laughed, running her left hand across her forehead. Her hips. Claire found herself looking once again at her hips. They were mesmerizing. She had them cocked outwards, away from her body, pointing directly at Claire. “What do you do?” Claire asked.

“I teach ballet,” she said.

“That’s wonderful,” Claire said. “I always wanted to be a ballerina when I was little. But I never took any ballet.”

“Well it’s never too late to start,” Erin said. “Actually, you could come over sometime. I teach out of our basement, we have a small studio down there. I could give you a lesson.”

Claire took another sip of wine. Her legs were heavy and tingly and felt as if they were about to buckle. “I’d like that,” Claire said. “That’d be fun.” Erin smiled. The two women stood for a moment in silence, Erin reclined against the wall, Claire bobbing uncertainly a few feet from her.

“Well,” Claire finally said. “I should probably go find my husband.”

“Of course,” Erin said.

“It’s late,” Claire said. “And he’s not very good with parties.”

Erin laughed. “No, I understand. Neither is Rose.” The women smiled at each other again.

“Well ok,” Claire said. She walked right past Erin, stopping at the top step. “I’ll come over some time, for the ballet.”

“I’ll look forward to it,” Erin said.

“Me, too,” Claire said before walking back down the stairs and into the now empty foyer. She looked for her husband. She could not find him, and instead sat down in the living room, on the white couch, next to Hubert Laramey who was cleaning off the table. She brought the glass to her mouth and slowly finished the last of her wine. Then, she rested her head on the back of the couch and, for a moment, closed her eyes.

David Sanborn needed a cigarette. He’d always hated his wife’s smoking. He always pointed out to her the irony of an environmental lawyer who smoked. But she’d quit five years ago. Instead, it was David who started smoking when his father first went into the hospital. It would just be a cigarette or two a day at first. But once things grew worse, and spring turned to summer without his father returning home, the smoking breaks became more frequent. Soon, David was smoking a pack a day.

He’d cut back from that after they moved. He and Claire decided it wasn’t a good example for the kids, and the past year, David had all but quit. Still, whenever he drank, he found it impossible not to smoke. He’d bought a pack earlier in the week, knowing he wouldn’t be able to make it through the party without at least one cigarette.

He was on his third smoke now. Back to back to back. His hands were cold, but he wasn’t ready to go inside yet. Besides, the rest of him was warm. He brought the cigarette to his lips and inhaled deeply, holding his breath, letting the smoke work its way down his throat. He felt his head spin. He leaned back and finally exhaled, a plume of smoke erupting upwards into the dark sky.

The door opened, and a short shadowy figure walked outside, towards David. As he emerged from the light, David recognized him. It was the short man with the curly hair. The man who’s wife had died. David still couldn’t remember his name. He stopped a few feet from David, on his left side. He looked upwards, at the stars, and plunged his hands into his pockets. David pulled out his pack of smokes, and held them towards him. The man finally looked down, at the cigarettes, but he put his hand up, palm outwards.

“I don’t smoke,” he said.

David nodded and put the smokes back in his coat pocket. He took another drag, closing his eyes. When he opened them, the man was still there. He didn’t talk, he didn’t move. He just looked upwards.

“I’m sorry about your wife,” David finally said.

Seymour turned to face him. “Thank you,” he said.

“My father died three years ago,” David said.

“I’m sorry,” Seymour said.

“No, I mean, it happens. He died right on the fourth of July, too. Can you believe that?”

Seymour smiled.

David could still remember it. He could hear fireworks exploding outside while he sat with his mother in the waiting room, crying. He remembered how hard his mother cried, how she couldn’t even stand. It made no sense to him now, how she could have cried that hard and could now, just three years later, be spending Christmas in Florida with a new boyfriend. She’d started dating him only seven months after David’s father died. That next June, she’d moved out of the house where David had grown up. After that, David and Claire decided to leave Philadelphia. It was the first time since college that David, who had fled to central Indiana to avoid becoming his father, did not live in Philadelphia.

“Can I ask you something?” David said.

“Sure,” Seymour said.

“How do you do it?” David asked. “How do you move on? How do you come to this party?”

Seymour looked skywards again, perhaps thinking. Then, he turned back to David. “You don’t,” he said. “You never really move on, you’re never really ok. But you have no choice but to try.”

David took a drag of his cigarette, rubbing his chin with his spare hand. He thought about this, and thought about his mother in Florida, in love with a man who was not his father. Then he thought about Claire, inside, and wondered if she, too, would move on were he to die first. He knew she would. He also knew he never would.

He dropped his cigarette to the ground, rubbing it out with his heel. Seymour was gazing at the stars again. David joined him, looking up, through the barren branches of an oak tree. The night was still clear, but David could not make out a single star. He didn’t know what Seymour was looking at. Quietly, he walked away, opening the backdoor. He finished the last of his wine, which he had left sitting on the kitchen counter. He walked through the dining room, which was still relatively crowded with people. In the living room, he found Claire sitting on the couch, talking to Hubert. He kissed her on the top of her head.

“You ready to go?” he said.

She leaned back, looking up at him. “Sure,” she said.

David smiled. “I’ll get our coats.”

“Ok,” his wife said. “I’ll be right here.”

David walked upstairs, and somehow found their jackets in the still massive pile on the Laramey’s bed. He put his on and went back downstairs. Claire was standing at the bottom of the stairwell, waiting for him. He slipped her coat around her shoulders. They said good bye to Hubert and Diane. Claire agreed to return the next day to retrieve the plate on which they brought the crab cakes. Then, they walked through the foyer and out the front door.

At the end of the driveway, Claire hooked her arm through David’s. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette. She took one from him. They walked in silence for most of the way home. Two houses from home, she turned to him.

“Maybe we should host the party next year,” she said.

“Maybe,” he said, dropping his cigarette.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It might be too much work.

“It might be.”

She sighed. “I had fun.”

“Me, too,” he said.

“You know that couple from across the street,” she asked. “The lesbians?”

“Yeah, the one reminds me of Samantha.”

“I know,” Claire said. “Well, she invited me over for ballet lessons. She teaches ballet, you know.”

“That’d be nice,” David said.

“I thought so.”

David and Claire climbed their front steps, quietly opening the front door. The babysitter was asleep in the living room, the television set blinking softly. David woke her and paid her while Claire went upstairs. David could hear her in the bathroom. He hoped she wasn’t getting sick. After the sitter left, David poured himself a glass of water and drank it. He would be hung over in the morning. He turned off the television and walked upstairs, into his bedroom. He shut the door behind. Claire was already in bed. He kissed her.

“I love you,” he said.

“You, too,” she said, groggily. He went into the bathroom, cracking the door slightly. He took off his pants, and hung his jacket on the back of the door. He rinsed his face and brushed his teeth. He turned off the light and felt his way into the bedroom again. He took off his shirt, now wearing only his boxers. He slid under the covers, feeling for his wife’s body. She was naked, and he ran his hands along the backs of her thighs, up to her waist, and up her back. He kissed her neck. It was no use; Claire was already soundly asleep.