Everyone has left or passed out, in the hallways and elevators, against the bar, curled up in the bathtubs, clutching each other spasmodically beneath the grand piano. A pair of bankers have lit a fire on the balcony overlooking the city and are half-heartedly trying to cook some frozen sausages; lord knows where they found them. The musicians packed up and left hours ago, the records have all spun down with no one to tend to them.

Leslie’s not the only one still awake, not by a long shot — he moves quietly among the weary staff slowly emptying ashtrays, collecting dishes, mopping up spilled drinks and vomit, pressing cash tactfully into palms — but nevertheless he feels alone. His brilliant emerald green tie has lost its luster, the delicate powder blue of his collar its starched crispness, his cuffs chafe at his wrists.

His feet hurt.

How long has it been, he wonders, since these became a habit more than a pleasure? He reaches back, but finds only stories worn out with repetition: how witty those early days, how strong the drinks, how beautiful the guests, how sparkling the lights. All a pretty performance, nothing more; the laughter, then as now, was always just a trifle forced.

Enough was never enough. He wore his mouth, that perfect pretty mouth, in a fashionably dissatisfied twist, like he’d just eaten a lemon out of overbred courtesy. His hands, his lovely longfingered hands, were never at ease, never at rest, but fluttered constantly between hip and chest, elbow and chin, inscribing graceful curlicues in the smoky air.

Heartbreaker.

Gorgeous and weakheaded, stonehearted, he razed the fields, salted the earth, left women and men lamenting behind him. Sackcloth and ashes. Who cared? There was always another willing captive snared by the long curve of his neck.

A dreadful bore.

Politics, always politics; copper mines in South America, revolution in the Middle East, assasinations in Asia, fascism in Europe. He stood in a corner, beautiful and shallow, and filled his mouth with himself.

He watched as thirty caterers, housemaids, waiters and decorators prepared for the evening’s party. He was standing next to the bar, resplendent in a robin’s egg blue suit, hair and tie rumpled to an exacting degree, slowly sipping from a vodka martini, letting the warmth of vermouth spread through him. The bartender was an enormous pile of a young man whose elephantine neck strained the collar of his silk shirt almost to bursting. They were all college students now, all the waiters and cleaners and servants, all pressed into livery for the night or for the weekend, and all thinking of the time to come when they should hire the servants for their own parties. When had they gotten so young? There was something ancient and ageless in the bartender’s eyes, a wearied professionalism that hid all his personality away, behind a tuxedo jacket and a scarlet cummerbund.

He finished his martini and the boy poured him another one without asking, floated an onion on the end of a pink cocktail skewer in the shape of a pirate cutlass. “Expecting a big crowd tonight, sir?”

“No more than usual.” He bit into the onion, let the bitterness fill his mouth.

It was summertime, a dusty, late August when everything was gilded with the foreknowledge of colder days to come. The party was outside, splashed gaudily across the lawns, everyone dazzling in pinks and yellows and greens. After six hours the gin and the vodka had made everyone’s eyes too bright, voice too loud, laughter too hollow. He wandered through the party, paper plate laden with potato salad, collecting swatches of conversation.

A man and a woman were arguing about philosophy, leaning into each other and yelling in German. The man threw his drink in her face and she socked him in the eye. Leslie pulled them apart. He handed the man to one of the staff and walked the woman to the carpark. She just sat in her car, slumped slightly forward, eyes unfocused and sad. “I was right,” she said. “I was so right. He just wouldn’t listen. He was wrong, he was so wrong…” Great, fat tears ran down her face and left dark splotches on the gravel.

Across the park there was a screech of burning rubber as the man left. “In our failures we are most ourselves,” said Leslie, and patted her awkwardly on the shoulder.