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aide, living next door to them. Roger Kendricks, on the international desk at
The Washington Post.
His wife, Laurie, owner of a thriving boutique in nearby Alexandria. Eric Vande Ven, the host, Washington city planner. Hostess Jan, an elementary school teacher. Ron Radebaugh, consultant on businesses in the Pacific. His wife, Nora, a poet, of all things. Then Richard Mougey, a State Department employee like Bill, an expert on the Middle East. His wife, Mary Mougey, a fund-raiser for international causes. An interesting collection, thought Louise.
    No sexual jealousies here that she could perceive, although Nora, who was leaning over talking to Bill, was a smoky woman with eyes luminous in the torchlight. She looked like the sort that all men fall in love with.
    Richard slumped down beside Louise and turned his pale Modigliani face her way. “I can see you’re suffering, my dear. You should be drinking gin like me instead of that 7-UP. Or maybe Eric and Jan should have entertained us all inside in the air-conditioning.”
    “Oh, no,” she said, smoothing back her long, damp hair. “We might as well get used to it again. I didn’t remember itbeing this sticky but tonight brings it all back to me: One is
insane
to stay in Washington in August. One should just go off to Maine, or Michigan.” She didn’t know why she had fallen into this pompous style of speech. She was downgrading Richard Mougey by assuming this drivel was what he wanted to hear. She sounded like the kind of person she hadn’t liked in the foreign service crowd. The kind who talked in their own little code and sent each other little verbal signals like “n.o.c.d.,” standing for “not our class, darling.” And spouted worldly little aphorisms beginning with “one should” or “one is.”
    She tried to relax her hands against the metal arms of the deck chair.
    What she thought was pompous was obviously everyday fare for Richard. He didn’t blink an eye. “You’re so right, Louise. We shouldn’t be here at all.” He slid an arm around the back of her chair. “Mary and I were planning to be in Austria, but we had to postpone it.”
    As he talked, she noted that he slyly looked her over, from her breasts to her legs. She wondered if his slight drunkenness would go beyond the garrulous level; she guessed not. As he examined her, she did the same to him, noting that he was not a healthy-looking man. Maybe fifty. He probably had smoked and drunk much more than a person should all through what Bill told her had been a solid if not illustrious career in foreign service.
    “In Foggy Bottom,” Richard continued, waving his highball glass in a northerly direction, “where your husband and I both work, we have always called Washington a hardship post—”
    “Too bad we don’t get hardship pay,” finished Louise, smiling.
    “Oh, come on, Richard,” said Roger, a balding, professorial man with surprising red plastic frames on his glasses. “A little hardship is in order for you guys. It makes up for all those years you were posted to Paris and Bonn, drinking fine wines and taking in all the good rathskellers and restaurants.”
    “Yeah,” agreed Eric, the host. Eric was big, blond, muscular. According to what Louise had heard, he drove his family into the hardest sports. “While Roger and I were back here solving the problems of the city and the country, respectively, you were across the pond collecting wines.”
    “And that brings us to the subject of wine tasting,” said Laurie, Roger’s handsome red-haired wife. Understandably, she advertised her boutique on her back. A layered look with checks, in an array of patterns—a little hot for tonight?—matching perfectly with her patterned shoes and patterned earrings. Louise noticed
she
wasn’t sweating; what was her secret?
    Laurie prodded Richard: “When are we going to have a wine tasting again?” She made a wide gesture. “Oh, why do I ask you when it’s Mary who will plan it. Mary,