"We didn't," she said.
"No," said Wes. His voice was very quiet. "Do you want to—"
"Not in a box," she said. "Not with forty people chanting. Not like this."
He nodded, slowly, as if she had said something reasonable about a media plan. Then he took off the Santa hat and held it in both hands.
Outside, the chant had dissolved into cheering, the way chants do when the people chanting decide among themselves that they have won. Somebody said, "Oh, they *definitely* did," in the confident tone of a person who had seen nothing whatsoever.
Margot took the antlers off and put them back in the basket. Her hands were steady. She was proud of that, absurdly.
"Margot," Wes said.
"I'm going to walk out of here," she said, "and I'm going to smile, because if I don't smile it'll be worse. And then I'm going home."
"Can I—"
"Monday," she said. "Whatever you're going to say, say it Monday. In daylight. With your shoes on the floor of an office."
She pulled back the curtain.
The light of the party was dull and yellow after the flash. Thirty or so faces turned toward her, flushed and delighted, holding plastic cups. Fergus, in front, was clapping with his hands above his head like a man at a stadium. The accounting team in their matching sweaters wore matching expressions of benevolent scandal. Bettina stood at the edge of the crowd with the extension cord still in one hand and a look on her face of a hostess who has just realized her centerpiece might be on fire.
And at the piano, Mr. Farrow sat with his hands in his lap, looking at Margot over the top of his reading glasses with an expression she could not read at all.
She smiled. It was a good smile. She could smile through this.
"Show's over," she said. "He's terrible at photography."
There was laughter, which was what she had wanted. Wes came out behind her with the Santa hat in his hands and did not say anything clever, which was so unlike him that a few people stopped laughing to look at him.
Farrow turned back to the piano. He looked at his watch. He began, softly, to play "Blue Christmas."
"Nine-fifteen," said Anil, somewhere behind her, in a voice of deep, reluctant awe.