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walked back through the marching band that followed in the parade. Above him were tenements, some of them owned by his father’s company, with their unimaginative façades and ersatz Italianate ornamentation. Those little plaster flourishes, which were always crumbling, depressed Henry beyond reason. He caught an elbow against a trombone, causing a small collision of musicians, and heard the music quaver for a moment. The band must have known who was signing their paychecks, however, and there was not even a mutter of complaint. They were after all wearing uniforms in the Schoonmaker colors of sky blue and gold.
    Henry kept on, through the band, with all its ear-shattering horns, through the clutch of ladies that followed, in their white gloves and weighty hats. He heard the ladies saying his name and knew that they had turned to look at the spectacle of the young man moving downtown, against the traffic of his own father’s event. He would hear about it later, of course. His father was fond of threatening to disown him if he did not behave as a future mayor’s son should, although these threats had mostly abated since his father had realized that he might plausibly base his campaign on the current mayor’s mishandling of a debutante’s death and the spectacle of his own son’s grief.
    “Schoonmaker!”
    Henry’s eyes moved across the faces of the people massed on the sidewalk and the paraders all around him until his gaze settled, happily, on the face of his old friend Teddy Cutting. Next to Teddy was his younger sister, Alice, who was fair like her brother, with the same gray eyes, which were now focused shyly on the ground. Henry had once kissed her in the garden of the Cuttings’ Newport cottage, and she hadn’t been able to look at him straight since. She was the youngest of Teddy’s sisters, Henry believed, although he could never be sure, as Teddy was the only son among several siblings. To Henry this had always been telling: Teddy was the kind of man who had too many sisters.
    “Miss Cutting,” Henry said, taking her gloved hand and kissing it. “It is always a pleasure to see you.”
    Teddy gave him a warning look. “You look like you’ve had about enough.”
    Henry smiled with his characteristic charm at both siblings, and said, “I’m full to the gills.”
    “Let’s go, then.” Teddy reached out and put a hand on Henry’s shoulder. He had been one of Henry’s chief sympathizers since the unfortunate events of October. “I know of a lunchroom near here.”
    They said good-bye to Alice, who joined a group of young women, and then they moved into the crowd of common people with their faces lowered. The shininess of Henry’s black top hat and the superb cut of his wool coat would have given them away as members of the city’s elite, as would the rich brown check of Teddy’s vicuna jacket, or the stamp of the Union Square milliner on his brown bowler. Still, they made no eye contact with the people in the crowd, and when they emerged onto a side street they hailed the first hackney they saw.
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    Teddy’s lunchroom was clean and bright, with a floor of small white octagonal tiles and convex mirrors lining the walls. They sat at a small round table made of sturdy dark wood, and they ordered the German beers that arrived in tall glasses with wedges of lemon. Henry felt quiet after several very public hours, and he was grateful that his friend waited to speak until after they had each sipped.
    “How are you bearing it?” Teddy asked, placing his glass back on the table. He had taken off his hat, and his blond hair was brushed neatly to the side. At Henry’s wary smile he went on. “I can barely listen to your father’s speeches, and I’m not even related to him. I mean, he hardly knew Elizabeth and then to use her death that way, for political purposes—” Teddy broke off, shaking his head in disbelief.
    “Let’s not talk about that.” Henry took a long pull of his