By Nightfall. Michael Cunningham

newly hung in the powder room (Elena can’t know, can she—if she’d hang this in a bathroom she’s got to be serious about her eyeglasses, too); there is the decision to have that third vodka after all; there is the flirtation with Elena—Hey, love the vodka; Angel, you know you can get it here anytime you like (he knows he is known, and probably scorned, for working it, the whole hey-I’d-do-you-if-I-had-the-chance thing); there is scrawny, hysterical Mike Forth, standing with Emmett near the Terence Koh, getting drunk enough to start homing in on Rebecca (Peter sympathizes with Mike, can’t help it, he’s been there—thirty years later he’s still amazed that Joanna Hurst did not love him, not even a little); there is a glimpse of the improbably handsome hired waiter talking surreptitiously on his cell in the kitchen (boyfriend, girlfriend, sex for hire—at least the kids who serve at these things have a little mystery about them); then back to the living room where—oops—Mike has managed to corner Rebecca after all, he’s talking furiously to her and she’s nodding, searching for the rescue Peter promised her; there is Peter’s quick check to make sure no one has been ignored; there is the goodbye conversation with Elena, who’s sorry she missed seeing the Vincents (Call me, there are a few other things I’d love to show you); there is the strangely ardent goodbye from Bette Rice (something’s up); the claiming of Rebecca (Sorry, I’ve got to take her away now, see you soon, I hope); the panicky parting grin from Mike, and goodbye goodbye, thank you, see you next week, yeah, absolutely, call me, okay, goodbye.

      Another cab, back downtown. Peter thinks sometimes that at the end, whenever it comes, he will remember riding in cabs as vividly as he recalls anything else from his earthly career. However noxious the smells (no air freshener this time, just a minor undercurrent of bile and crankcase oil) or how aggressively inept the driving (one of those accelerate-and-brake guys, this time), there is that sense of enclosed flotation; of moving unassaulted through the streets of this improbable city.

      They are crossing Central Park along Seventy-ninth Street, one of the finest of all nocturnal taxi rides, the park sunk in its green-black dream of itself, its little green-gold lights marking circles of grass and pavement at their bases. There are, of course, desperate people out there, some of them refugees, some of them criminals; we do as well as we can with these impossible contradictions, these endless snarls of loveliness and murder.

      Rebecca says, “You didn’t save me from Hurricane Mike.”

      “Hey, I wrested you away the second I saw you with him.” She’s sitting inwardly, hugging her own shoulders though there’s not even a hint of cold.

      She says, “I know you did.”

      But still, he has failed her, hasn’t he?

      He says, “Something seems to be going on with Bette.”

      “Rice?”

      How many other Bettes were at the party? How much of his life is devoted to answering these obvious little questions; how much closer does he move to a someday stroke with every fit of mini-rage over the fact that Rebecca has not been paying attention, has not been with the goddamned program?

      “Mm-hm.”

      “What, do you think?”

      “I have no idea. Something about when she said goodbye. I felt something. I’ll give her a call tomorrow.”

      “Bette’s at an age.”

      “As in, menopause?”

      “Among other things.”

      They thrill him, these little demonstrations of womanly certainty. They’re right out of James and Eliot, aren’t they? We are in fact made of the same material as Isabel Archer, as Dorothea Brooke.

      The cab reaches Fifth Avenue, turns right. From Fifth Avenue the park regains its aspect of dormant nocturnal threat, of black trees and a waiting, gathering something. Do the billionaires who live in these buildings ever feel it? When their drivers bring them home at night, do they ever glance across the avenue and imagine themselves safe, just barely, for now, from a wildness that watches with long and hungry patience from under the trees?

      “When is Mizzy coming?” he asks.

      “He said sometime next week. You know how he is.”

      “Mm.”

      Peter does, in fact, know how he is. He’s one of those smart, drifty young people who, after certain deliberations, decides he wants to do Something in the Arts but won’t, possibly can’t, think in terms of an actual job; who seems to imagine that youth and brains and willingness will simply summon an occupation, the precise and perfect nature of which will reveal itself in its own time.

      This family of women really ruined the poor kid, didn’t they? Who could survive having been so desperately loved?

      Rebecca turns to him, arms still folded across her breasts. “Does it seem ridiculous to you sometimes?”

      “What?”

      “These parties and dinners, all those awful people.”

      “They’re not all awful.”

      “I know. I just get tired of asking all the questions. Half those people don’t even know what I do.”

      “That’s not true.”

      Well, maybe it’s a little bit true. Blue Light, Rebecca’s arts and culture magazine, is not a heavy-hitter among people like these, I mean it’s no Artforum or Art in America. There’s art, sure, but there’s also poetry and fiction and—horror of horrors—the occasional fashion spread.

      She says, “If you’d rather Mizzy not stay with us, I’ll find another place for him.”

      Oh, it’s still about Mizzy, isn’t it? Little brother, the love of her life.

      “No, it’s totally okay. I haven’t even seen him in, what? Five years? Six?”

      “That’s right. You didn’t come to that thing in California.”

      Suddenly, a pained and unexpected silence. Had she been angry about him not going to California? Had he been angry with her for being angry? No recollection. Something bad about California, though. What?

      She leans forward and kisses him, sweetly, on the lips. “Hey,” he whispers.

      She burrows her face into his neck. He wraps an arm over her. “The world is exhausting sometimes, isn’t it?” she says.

      Peace made. And yet. Rebecca is capable of remembering every slight, and of trotting out months’ worth of Peter’s crimes when an argument heats up. Has he committed some infraction tonight, something he’ll hear about in June or July?

      “Mm-hm,” he says. “You know, I think we can definitively say that Elena is serious about the hair and glasses, et cetera.”

      “I told you she was.”

      “You never did.”

      “You just don’t remember.”

      The cab stops for the light at Sixty-fifth Street.

      Here they are: a middle-aged couple in the back of a cab (this driver’s name is Abel Hibbert, he’s young and jumpy, silent, fuming). Here are Peter and his wife, married for twenty-one (almost twenty-two) years, companionable by now, prone to banter, not much sex anymore but not no sex, not like other long-married couples he could name, and yeah, at a certain age you can imagine bigger accomplishments, a more potent and inextinguishable satisfaction, but what you’ve made for yourself isn’t bad, it’s not bad at all. Peter Harris, hostile child, horrible adolescent, winner of various second prizes, has arrived at this ordinary moment, connected, engaged, loved, his wife’s breath warm on his neck, going home.

      Come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with me, doop doop de doop …

      That song again.

      The light changes. The driver accelerates.

      The point of the sex is …

      Sex