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Anne and Lyon. On the first Thursday in October, when everyone had come back from the Hamptons, they took a yellow legal pad and two matching fountain pens to a small Italian restaurant with wallpaper in a pattern ofzebras, and they began to plan the guest list for their annual New Year’s Eve celebration.
    Over red wine and stuffed mushrooms, they went through last year’s guest list, gossiping about everyone’s behavior. There were good guests (people who arrived early and stayed late, people who danced, people who sent thank-you notes) and bad guests (people who hid in the library all night long, people who dropped ashes on the carpets, people who got sloppy when drunk).
    “She was the one who spilled her salad on the wing chair?” Lyon asked.
    “And never offered to pay for the cleaning,” Anne said. “It cost me four hundred dollars to have that cushion reupholstered.” She raised her eyebrows, and Lyon crossed the name off the list.
    When the main course came, they moved on to the additions: new clients, new friends, new spouses, the parents of Jenn’s new friends. A new neighbor in Southampton, a writer whose third book had been a surprise bestseller, the model who had been tapped to represent Gillian’s new line of anti-aging products (only in her late twenties and already retired from the runway), a schoolmate of Lyon’s who had just moved from London to New York.
    “Do you think we’ll still be giving this party thirty years from now?” asked Anne.
    “As long as I’ve got the strength to open a champagne bottle,” said Lyon. “I picture you exactly the same, with a pack of grandchildren.”
    “How many grandchildren?”
    “Three,” Lyon said. “Two girls and one boy.”
    Anne gave him a sad smile. “Only three?”
    “Darling,” Lyon said, “not tonight, we’re having such a lovely time.” Anne wanted another child, and another after that. Lyon wanted no more children.
    When the second bottle of wine arrived, the cuts began. A couple who had argued publicly for three years in a row. A man who hadtaken out a vial of cocaine right in front of the building’s grandfatherly elevator operator. Various ex-wives and ex-husbands. Anne and Lyon had a two-year rule about divorces: they never took sides publicly, and they continued to invite both halves of the couple for two years following a messy divorce.
    At the end of two years, a decision was made. Which one had they managed to stay friends with? Which one had invited them to a party or a weekend in the country? Which one still did business with Lyon? Which one still did charity work with Anne?
    Almost always, it was the man who stayed on the list. The women just seemed to drift away. They moved up to Woodstock and fell in love with carpenters. They went to Europe and found younger men. They resettled in California and discovered yoga. They moved back to their hometowns and got jobs with the local newspapers. A few stayed in New York. They got new haircuts and redecorated their bedrooms. Anne saw them for lunch, but rarely in the evenings.
    They were finished by the time the coffee arrived.
    “I was thinking, maybe we could scale back a bit this year,” Lyon said. “On the little things that no one really notices.”
    “Such as?”
    “We don’t necessarily have to serve top-shelf liquor all night long.”
    “Lyon, liquor is the one thing everybody does notice.”
    “Well, I’m sure you’ll think of something. This party has gotten so expensive.”
    “I thought we were having a good year,” Anne said.
    “We are, we are, a fabulous year. But we’ve got a huge tax bill coming in, and don’t forget the balloon payment on the mortgage.”
    “I thought we set that money aside in August,” Anne said. She remembered Lyon calling their stockbroker from Southampton. A stock he had bought the year before had tripled in value. Lyonhad given the broker orders to sell and then put the money aside to cover the balloon payment. They had gone