I think we were already onto dessert by then, I don’t remember now, certainly we’d already dug into Olive’s pesto penne and his tomato and red onion salad, and certainly we’d already taste-tested and double-taste-tested Emily’s broccoli-anchovy orzo, and for sure we’d scooped up sloppy spoonfuls from the platter of sweet grilled vegetables—

I seem to think we’d cut into the peach frangipane tart already; in any case, all of a sudden we were shouting, and confused, and Zidane was sloping off the field, sad and hunchy. Or maybe just pissed off, it’s hard to say from someone’s back.

We were still hopeful, though—jaunty, even, or maybe it was just the nervousness making us jumpy—and I said, “If they win, we can celebrate with cake!” Covering all the bases, Suz said, “And if they lose, we will drown our sorrows in cake!” There was still a goodly half of the tart on the chopping board, you see, for Walter had brought a bunch of shy Irishpeople who seemed to not eat a thing; and some of us knew there was something else in the kitchen, a hazelnut meringue–chocolate cream tower thing—what qualifies as “cake”?—on a squat white pedestal.

You know by now, they lost, so the sorrows were drowned. And still the shy Irishpeople didn’t eat, which meant, as that lady once said, a friend of my father’s, one afternoon when her family took my family out to a many-coursed lunch and my sister refused, and then refused again, an extra serving of some unremarkable something: “less man more share.” Does this translate directly from the Chinese? I know you know.

“Eeeyur!” I said, and Dan and I were gossiping in Mandarin. “Wèi shen me ta mén bú yào chi?” I may have been waving the large slicey knife at that moment, or licking chocolate off my fingers. “Bú yòng zhè mè dà sheng shuo ba,” he said, and he reached out for a second helping.



Weird, we were so quiet after, while, outside, people honked car horns and blew shrill whistles in the street for hours yet.