Is that all right? Does that seem all right to you? Does it satisfy your curiosity?”

“Yes,” I said. “Of course.” Mack was not angry. He was, instead, a thing that anger had no part in, or at least had long been absent from, something akin to exhaustion, where the words you say are the only true words you can say. Myself, I did not think I’d ever felt that way. Always for me there had been a choice.

“Do you understand me?” Mack Bolger’s thick athlete’s brow furrowed, as if he was studying a creature he didn’t entirely understand, an anomaly of some kind, which perhaps I was.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“Well then,” he said, and seemed embarrassed. He looked away, out over the crowd of moving heads and faces, as if he’d sensed someone coming.

I looked toward where he seemed to be looking. But no one was approaching us. Not Beth, not a daughter. Not anyone. Perhaps, I thought, this was all a lie, or possibly even that I’d, for an instant, lost consciousness, and this was not Mack Bolger at all, and I was dreaming everything.

“Do you think there could be someplace else you could go now?” Mack said. His big, tanned, handsome face looked imploring and exhausted. Once Beth had said Mack and I looked alike. But we didn’t. That had just been her fantasy. Without really looking at me again he said, “I’ll have a hard time introducing you to my daughter. I’m sure you can imagine that.”

“Yes,” I said. I looked around again, and this time I saw a pretty blond girl standing in the crowd, watching us from several steps away. She was holding a red nylon backpack by its straps. Something was causing her to stay away. Possibly her father had signaled her not to come near us. “Of course,” I said. And by speaking I somehow made the girl’s face break into a wide smile, a smile I recognized.

“Nothing’s happened here,” Mack said unexpectedly to me, though he was staring at his daughter. From the pocket of his overcoat he’d produced a tiny white box wrapped and tied with a red bow.

“I’m sorry?” People were swirling noisily around us. The music seemed louder. I was leaving, but I thought perhaps I’d misunderstood him. “I didn’t hear you,” I said. I smiled in an involuntary way.

“Nothing’s happened today,” Mack Bolger said. “Don’t go away thinking anything happened here. Between you and me, I mean.