"How do you know?"
"Because it's straight."
The Golds came down from the third floor last. Marty Gold was sixty-eight and had lived in the building since 1971, longer than anyone, longer than Hollander had owned it. He had been a machinist and then a union steward and was now, in retirement, primarily a man with opinions about the Bulls, who had lost only three games all season and whom he did not trust. Annette Gold had run the switchboard at a Loop insurance company for twenty-six years and could still, she claimed, tell from the first ring whether a caller was going to be trouble. She brought a Bundt cake. Marty brought a bottle of rye and his own glass.
"Who else is coming?" Annette said, because there were eight chairs set out and six people.
Delia looked at Sam. Sam looked at Delia.
"Evelyn," Delia said.
The room changed temperature. Marty set his glass down.
They all knew about Evelyn. It was the kind of building where everyone knew about everything, eventually; there were heating ducts that carried conversations between floors with indecent fidelity, and in any case Delia had never hidden it. Annette had been the one, in 1992, to tell Delia that the box in the closet was Paul's, that Paul had thrown a party every New Year's Eve in that apartment from 1982 to 1990, that the tinsel had been his signature, that people came from all over the city and stood on the stairs.
Marty had said less. Marty had been at the hospital.
"Here?" he said now. "Tonight?"
"She flew in this afternoon. She asked if she could see the room."
"She could have seen the room," Marty said, "in 1990." He picked up his glass again and looked into it. "Sorry. It's your party."
"It's all right."
"It's not all right," he said. "But it's your party."
---
At a quarter to nine, while Nell was arguing with Ronnie about whether TLC counted as party music and Faye was showing Annette a photograph of a set of twins she had delivered on Christmas morning, Delia went into the kitchen for more ice and Sam followed her, the way he did, to carry something.