At the marble estate of a great family in decline. The grandfather takes my friends for a swim but I stay behind to sleep. It takes me a while to notice that two of three grown sons are deaf. The younger is a graphic artist whose work about an abducted Balkan princess we published in 1982. (Don't bring it up, I'm told, or he'll suggest another project.) The older one is deafer: once he came home with two Chinese guys and two big bags of Chinese food, and only three plates. In the end he shared, but we all knew he had forgotten.