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"Good morning," said Blaine.

"Blaine, a question about the linens."

Nobody breathed.

"Yes," said Blaine.

"The rental company want to know whether they're going back as-is or whether we're paying for cleaning." Benny's face did not move a millimeter. "Given the condition of some of them."

"Cleaning," said Blaine.

"That was my recommendation."

"Thank you, Benny."

"Not at all."

He poured himself a coffee, sat down, put the arrangement on the table next to his plate, and that was the entire extent of anything he ever said about it.

* * *

The gifts took the whole morning. Rhoda had them stacked in the room off the front hall that Harold calls the library and in which nobody has ever read anything.

"They all have to go back," said Blaine.

"Sol, we can do that next week—"

"They all go back today with a note, and every note says exactly the same thing." He'd found a legal pad somewhere, and I recognized what was happening with total clarity, because I have watched him do it before. "If they say different things, people compare them."

"Nobody compares them."

"Everybody compares them. There were four people in that meadow who work in litigation."

So he drafted it. On a legal pad, on the floor of the library, hungover, the day after his botched wedding — and I sat on a box and watched the man I love build a wall out of stationery.

"Dear blank," he read out. "Thank you for your generosity, and for being with us. Your gift is being returned with our — what?"

"Apologies."

"Not apologies. Apologies invite correspondence."

"Regards," said Lance from the doorway.

"With our thanks," said Blaine. "It's circular. Nobody can do anything with it."

"That's beautiful," said Harold. "A beautiful piece of nothing."

"Thank you, Father."

Then he got to the third box. It was from Bex — an Ascendant gift basket with a ninety-five-dollar water bottle in it. The card read WISHING YOU BOTH AN INFINITE ASCENT.

Blaine looked at it for a while.

"Keeping that one." He wrote nothing at all, and moved on.

* * *

Rhoda found me in the hall around noon.