It was impossible to carry on a long conversation but Andrea kept trying anyway, leaning forward at so sharp an angle that the collar of her sweater fell open and the soft swell of her cleavage, with its smattering of chestnut freckles, gleamed like ripe pears, as she shouted: “Sorry, what? What?” Ivy watched Gideon. But it was hard to tell what he really thought of Andrea. In a way, he reminded Ivy of her aunt Sunrin. Such impeccable manners. But where Sunrin’s polish emitted superiority—her difference set her apart—Gideon’s included you in its intimacy, like a gentle guide whispering the answers in your ear so that you felt very clever when you said the right words. Ivy could see the magic of it on Andrea’s glowing face—how special and beautiful I am, Andrea was thinking. Ivy wondered if that was how she looked talking to Gideon. Every twitch of his brow, cock of his head, curve of his lips signaled, to her, lust, incredulity, contempt. She imagined Gideon harboring these emotions because these were the emotions she harbored herself.

“Do you have any single friends?” Andrea asked Gideon after her second glass of sparkling lemonade. She wasn’t drinking, but Ivy could hardly ever tell the difference between drunk and sober Andrea. Probably alcohol wasn’t allowed on her diet.

“There’s my cofounder, Roland,” said Gideon.

“How old is he?”

“Twenty-seven. No wait. Twenty-six.”

Andrea shook her head. “I’m thirty-three.”

“What?”

“She’s thirty-three,” said Ivy.

“Twenty-six is still a baby,” said Andrea. “I need a man”—she tapped her finger—“to put a ring on it.”

Gideon nodded sympathetically.

“Andrea’s becoming very practical these days,” said Ivy.

“All men want these days is sex. You know what Chris said to me the other day? He said, ‘Why should I want to get married now? The longer I wait, the more my stock goes up.’ And he’s right!” Andrea shook her head helplessly. “Time’s running out for me but he hasn’t even reached his prime yet! Why should he want a thirty-three-year-old with decaying eggs when he can have a twenty-two-year-old fresh from college?” She wagged a finger at Gideon. “You’d better not be wasting Ivy’s time. Two years with Daniel! She just wanted to meet his mom. What a chickenshit.”

Ivy dragged Andrea to the restroom. She listened to Andrea struggling with the zipper of her pants before going into the stall to help her.

“You’re the best,” said Andrea, leaning a hot forehead against Ivy’s shoulder. “Gideon should know he can’t mess with my best friend.”

With a best friend like you, Ivy thought, who needs enemies? She brushed Andrea’s bangs back from her temples.

“You have to make him work for it,” Andrea went on. “Ask him if he’s seeing other women… demand that he give you an answer! Men need ultimatums. Gideon seems like a good one but you can’t always tell by their clothes… remember that South African guy I was with last year? He had that pet python? He asked if he could strap on a… well, anyway, I was like ‘No, honey, you can’t insert that rocket into my a-hole,’ and then he dumps me the next day. This was the same man who told me he wanted two of our own kids, then we’d adopt our third because there’s so many babies who need a good family. I cried when he said that.” Andrea gazed up at Ivy in pity, as if Ivy had been the one who’d cried when a man said he wanted to have three children with her, one adopted. “You’re the innocent type. Men love to take advantage. If Gideon asks you to do anything you don’t want to, tell me and I’ll give him a piece of my mind. If he respects you, he would respect your boundaries.”

Ivy considered the woman before her. The indignant expression meant to express feminine loyalty, the simmering anger that seemed to be universal to all single women over thirty. Neither the loyalty nor the anger had anything to do with Ivy; she was simply the persona upon which Andrea’s ideas of life refracted themselves.

She washed her hands and went back outside.

The band was playing a sultry rendition of a Billie Holiday song. Gideon was watching the saxophonist. The man swayed with each velvety vibrato, his chapped lips exhaling into the mouthpiece through brute force as beads of sweat formed, quivered, then dripped down his temples. Gideon closed his eyes. He picked up his drink and downed it in one mouthful. His Adam’s apple was very prominent when he swallowed.

Ivy reached the table. She leaned down and kissed the side of Gideon’s neck where his pulse throbbed. The tumbler slipped from his fingers.

“Are you having fun?” she asked.

“Yes!” He glanced behind her shoulder. “Is Andrea all right?”

“She’s just freshening up.” Ivy brought her stool closer so their knees knocked together when she sat down. “I’m sorry about her grilling you earlier.”

“Not at all. She seems like a great friend. Very protective of you.”

“Her therapist told her she tends to project her emotions onto others.”

“I can see that.” He added something she didn’t catch.

“What’s that?”

“I said—it’s not every person who can be that honest with what they want.”

The quartet began an upbeat rock number. Andrea came back. She seemed excited, almost hectic.

“Whee! I peed for almost two minutes. And guess what? I got my period! I was almost a week late… it must have been my diet throwing me off. Can you imagine if I was actually pregnant?… It’s not like Chris and I are ready at all to be parents… God, it’s hot in here… I need a drink!” She ordered an extra-dry martini and took out from her purse a large Japanese fan, flapping it vigorously toward her crumpled, ecstatic face. Ivy and Gideon averted their eyes. Even honest Andrea couldn’t be honest about everything.

* * *

IVY LAY ON her bed waiting for the Lins to arrive. It was almost dusk. Shadow puppets flitted side to side with the incoming draft, and the sweet smell of dying irises and white jasmine tea candles, flickering in every nook of her room, transported her back to Sylvia’s bohemian apartment—had it only been three months ago?—where her memories of the party had taken on a dazzling glow, all the faces sneering and beautiful, the clamor of disparate voices blending into a single sonorous voice. She hadn’t enjoyed herself at the party. But it’d also been one of the best nights of her life. The two were not always in opposition.

It was her birthday today. She’d been alive for twenty-seven years. What had she done with her time? I’m a first-grade teacher, she thought. It seemed incredible. Meifeng always said that everyone had a great future in their past. How had she let hers slip away?

It’d seemed natural postcollege, after a year of waffling over law school, to concede that she would never make it as a lawyer and slide onto the easier path of getting her teaching certification. A lot of girls from her sorority became teachers. Ivy didn’t like children but that didn’t matter. Being a teacher wasn’t actually about teaching. Most jobs have nothing to do with the day-to-day work and everything to do with what they represent. Teachers made good trophy wives to wealthy men. Why struggle to climb the corporate ladder yourself when you can retire after marriage to volunteer at puppy shelters and color-code your sweater drawers? One of her colleagues, Christine Masterman, started a cooking blog the day she got engaged. Now Christine walked around school in her fifties-era starched skirts and little ballet slippers, pushing gluten-free brownies on all the other teachers—they tasted like dried avocado, which they were—and bursting with so much Mary Poppins smugness Ivy wanted to smack her across the back of the head the way Shen used to smack her and Austin when they got carried away. Only patience had tempered her resentment: one day, she’d thought, her time would come. But what she hadn’t realized was that unlike herself, the other teachers at Kennedy already had a pool of future husbands to choose from. Family friends, childhood playmates, church members, best friends of older brothers, their dads’ golf partners’ nephews. For the Christines and Sylvias and Arabellas of the world, an acceptable job was just another task to tick off on the life list, no different from choosing the right hat to wear to a polo match in Newport. Ivy had been their friend, she’d hooked up with their exes, but she had always been different. She had no family to back her.

Gideon said last week at Dresdan’s that not everyone could be honest about what they wanted. Was he hinting that she wasn’t honest? That she was “guarded,” that he couldn’t see himself marrying her?

With one arm, Ivy pulled out a cigarette from the pack in her nightstand and lit it on the flame of a candle. She blew tepid smoke rings onto the ceiling and watched them dissipate, thinking dully that her dreams were just like these smoke rings: they rose one by one, died without ever taking form.

The doorbell rang. She got up very slowly and looked out the window. A bright nickel-colored van was parked on the curb. It was Nan’s new car. Ivy suspected her mother felt guilty about such a large purchase because Nan had talked about nothing else during their last few phone calls. A van was safe, spacious, and because it was paid for up front in cash, Nan said they’d gotten a good deal. “Always bring your cash when you buy a car,” Nan had advised her. As if Ivy had thousands of dollars lying around to spend on new cars, when she could barely afford repairs on her shitty Camry. I should stop sending them money each month, she thought resentfully.

“A-ya, you look so skinny!” Nan greeted Ivy, bursting through the doorway carrying several bags of heavy groceries. “I need to refrigerate these right away—” She swept past Ivy toward the kitchen.