The Interloper by Antoine Wilson

reason along the way they had adopted Patty (and, by extension, me) into their circle and we would get invited occasionally to their table, at which sat an assortment of individuals and couples, specially selected to socialize well together, always with some new blood thrown in. Later, I discovered that our hostess kept a book in the kitchen in which she inscribed, for every dinner, the guests at the table, the food served, and who should be re-invited with whom and whether any glaring incompatibilities showed up.
    We arrived early and therefore had to tolerate the most awkward stage of the evening, waiting for the other couples to arrive. Showing up late was Patty’s preference—you could join in conversations that had already started, you could survey all thesocial dynamics in one swift appraising glance. But I could not stand being late. “You’d rather catch our hostess in curlers,” Patty used to say, “than risk being the last to arrive.”
    I had been preoccupied with my response to Raven all day, and I had to make a conscious effort to reintegrate into the social world. Patty had not looked so elegant in a long time. She wore black, of course, but something about this outfit made her look as though she had decided to cast off the mourner’s uniform for the night. With the right makeup and a good mood, her big eyes and natural sneer made her look like royalty. I had accepted, but never fully gotten used to, the way Patty could transform herself, depending on whether she was going to work, dinner, or a party—each place requiring a specific kind of performance—and I found myself looking forward to this evening, to observing her in her element. I felt lucky and proud that she was mine.
    Patty and our hostess talked about each other’s outfits while the host and I exchanged grumbling greetings, both of us acknowledging thereby that the evening belonged to the women, so to speak. The house was big and hollow and new, and while you could spot our hostess’s attempts to make it cozy and homey—blankets thrown over the couches, flowers in the alcoves—the effect was one of attempted hominess rather than the genuine feeling anyone lived there.
    Several more people arrived; we stood in the kitchen, sipping wine, making introductions. The room was broken up into several one-on-one or one-on-two conversations. I stood alone, occupying myself with the opening and pouring of wine, and sampled bits and pieces of what people were saying. One canlearn a great deal by zipping the mouth and opening the ears. I watched the women, the way they handled the men. I am a quick study.
    A current event absorbed, amoeba-like, all the other topics, and the small conversations became a big group conversation. There had been another suicide bombing in the Middle East. It had been all over the news that day. Dozens of people, many of them children, dead. The talk went round and round, with expressions of sympathy for the victims, shaking heads of halfway-around-the-world impotence, a few words about the news media, early symptoms of compassion-fatigue and its cousin, compassion-fatigue-fatigue. There is no group duller than one’s peers.
    “I cannot understand how someone would think it’s a good idea to blow themselves up,” said our host.
    “And kill children,” added our hostess. Various gestures of agreement.
    “It’s incomprehensible.” This from a short and bearded Professor of Something. “They’re maniacs.”
    I hadn’t said anything. I had been trying to cut the foil from a bottle of white wine with the sharp tip of the opener’s corkscrew. I had not yet learned that most foil tops can be pulled right off, sleeve-like. You have to keep your eye on that sharp metal tip if you don’t want to spear your finger and give yourself tetanus. I sliced the foil and removed it successfully.
    “What I can’t understand,” I offered, “is why we think we’re any different.” I twisted the corkscrew into the cork. I had