I finish my drink. The table sits facing me in total silence. Courtney's smiling and seems pleased. Timothy just shakes his head in bemused disbelief. Evelyn is completely mystified by the turn the conversation has taken and she stands, unsteadily, and asks if anyone would like dessert.

"I have... sorbet," she says as if in a daze. "Kiwi, carambola, cherimoya, cactus fruit and oh... what is that..." She stops her zombie monotone and tries to remember the last flavor. "Oh yes, Japanese pear."

Everyone stays silent. Tim quickly looks over at me. I glance at Courtney, then back at Tim, then at Evelyn. Evelyn meets my glance, then worriedly looks over at Tim. I also look over at Tim, then at Courtney and then at Tim again, who looks at me once more before answering slowly, unsurely, "Cactus pear."

"Cactus fruit," Evelyn corrects.

I look suspiciously over at Courtney and after she says "Cherimoya" I say "Kiwi" and then Vanden says "Kiwi" also and Stash says quietly, but enunciating each syllable very clearly, "Chocolate chip."

The worry that flickers across Evelyn's face when she hears this is instantaneously replaced by a smiling and remarkably good-natured mask and she says, "Oh Stash, you know I don't have chocolate chip, though admittedly that's pretty exotic for a sorbet. I told you I have cherimoya, cactuspear, carambola, I mean cactus fruit  - "

"I know. I heard you, I heard you," he says, waving her off. "Surprise me."

"Okay," Evelyn says. "Courtney? Would you like to help?"

"Of course." Courtney gets up and I watch as her shoes click away into the kitchen.

"No cigars, boys," Evelyn calls out.

"Wouldn't dream of it," Price says, putting a cigar back into his coat pocket.

Stash is still staring at the sushi with an intensity that troubles me and I have to ask him, hoping he will catch my sarcasm, "Did it, uh, move again or something?"

Vanden has made a smiley face out of all the disks of California roll she piled onto her plate and she holds it up for Stash's inspection and asks, "Rex?"

"Cool," Stash grunts.

Evelyn comes back with the sorbet in Odeon margarita glasses and an unopened bottle of Glenfiddich, which remains unopened while we eat the sorbet.

Courtney has to leave early to meet Luis at a company party at Bedlam, a new club in midtown. Stash and Vanden depart soon after to go "score" something somewhere in SoHo. I am the only one who saw Stash take the piece of sushi from his plate and slip it into the pocket of his olive green leather bomber jacket. When I mention this to Evelyn, while she loads the dishwasher, she gives me a look so hateful that it seems doubtful we will have sex later on tonight. But I stick around anyway. So does Price. He is now lying on a late-eighteenth-century Aubusson carpet drinking espresso from a Ceralene coffee cup on the floor of Evelyn's room. I'm lying on Evelyn's bed holding a tapestry pillow from Jenny B. Goode, nursing a cranberry and Absolut. Evelyn sits at her dressing table brushing her hair, a Ralph Lauren green and white striped silk robe draped over a very nice body, and she is gazing at her reflection in the vanity mirror.

"Am I the only one who grasped the fact that Stash assumed his piece of sushi was" - I cough, then resume - "a pet?"

"Please stop inviting your 'artiste' friends over," Tim says tiredly. "I'm sick of being the only one at dinner who hasn't talked to an extraterrestrial."

"It was only that once," Evelyn says, inspecting a lip, lost is her own placid beauty.

"And at Odeon, no less," Price mutters.

I vaguely wonder why I wasn't invited to Odeon for the artists dinner. Had Evelyn picked up the tab? Probably. And I suddenly picture a smiling Evelyn, secretly morose, sitting at a whole table of Stash's friends - all of them constructing little log cabins with their french fries or pretending their grilled salmon was alive and moving the piece of fish around the table, the fish conversing with each other about the "art scene," new galleries; maybe even trying to fit the fish into the log cabin made of french fries...

"If you remember well enough, I hadn't seen one either," Evelyn says.

"No, but Bateman's your boyfriend, so that counted." Price guffaws and I toss the pillow at him. He catches it then throws it back at me.

"Leave Patrick alone. He's the boy next door," Evelyn says, rubbing some kind of cream into her face. "You're not an extraterrestrial, are you honey?"

"Should I even dignify that question with an answer?" I sigh.