Daniel and Hampton were paired by chance and against their wishes.They were not friends—Hampton did not particularly like Daniel, and Daniel had every reason to avoid being alone with Hampton.But Daniel’s girlfriend or partner or whatever he was supposed to call her, Kate, Kate went home to relieve the baby-sitter who was minding her daughter, and Hampton’s wife, there was no ambigu-ity there, his wife, Iris, with whom Daniel was fiercely in love, had gone home to look after their son.Daniel and Hampton stayed behind to search for a blind girl, a heartsick and self-destructive blind girl who had run away from today’s cocktail party, either to get lost or to be found, no one was sure.

The searchers, fourteen in all, were each given a Roman candle—whoever found

the lost girl was to fire the rocket into the sky, so the others would know—and each of the pairs was assigned a section of the property in which to look for Marie.

“Looks like you and me,”Daniel said to Hampton, because he had to say something.

Hampton barely responded and he continued to only minimally acknowledge

Daniel’s nervous chatter as they walked away from the mansion through an untended expanse of wild grass that soon led into a dense wood of pine, locust, maple, and oak.Aside from the contrast of their color—Daniel was white, Hampton black—the two men were remarkably similar in appearance.They were both in their mid-thirties, an inch or so over six feet tall, broad-shouldered, reasonably fit.They were even dressed similarly, in khaki pants, white shirts, and blue blazers, though Daniel’s jacket was purchased at Macy’s, and Hampton’s had been sewn specially for him by a Chinese tailor in the city.