Knowing that this would be the nicest party he’d ever attended, Herb had dressed well. Better, it turned out, than everyone else in attendance, including the host, Anne Mustoll. Herb saw a few other men wearing neckties, but no one else wore a whole suit. Jeans were more common than pants, even. Everyone looked good, though, very well-groomed, and it was clear that their casual clothing was more expensive than Herb’s formal attire. Thankfully, no one had yet commented on Herb’s clothes. But no one had said much of anything to him, so it was hard to tell if they had not noticed how overdressed he was, had noticed but didn’t care, had noticed but didn’t care to comment, or had noticed but had so far succeeded in their efforts to restrain themselves from commenting despite their desire to do so.

               Whatever the case, Herb was now alone in the “garden” not smoking a cigarette. He had asked Anne, in one of the brief moments between her animated conversations with other guests, where the best place to smoke a cigarette would be, and she had directed him to the garden, but he had never explicitly said that he was going to smoke a cigarette. He stood with his wrists crossed at waist-level behind his back and tried to savor the bite of an early March evening. He had told himself that what he sought outside was fresh, cool air, but the air inside the party was not the problem. It was normal indoor air, which he never found objectionable, and the temperature indoors was faultless, too. What he really sought was some distance from the other guests. It was easier to accept not being talked to when there was no around to talk to him.

               Not that no one had said “hi.” Everyone had said “hi.” But no one had seen fit to move beyond “hi.” It had been “hi” and only “hi.”

               “Hi!”

               Herb turned to see a woman approaching who had not, until the moment just past, yet said “hi” to him. He was relieved to see her wearing an ankle-length gown. Although the gown’s sleeves were long, they were loose and made of a flimsy material. It was at least as formal as his suit. The woman’s hair was done up in an attractive heap atop her head. In her heels, she was an inch or so shorter than Herb.

               “Hello,” said Herb.

               “It’s so nice to see a familiar face,” said the woman. “What a relief!”

               “I’m a familiar face?” asked Herb. “I’m sorry, your face isn’t familiar to me. Where do you know me from?”

               The woman was hurt by Herb’s lack of recognition, insulted. “We worked together for almost a year! You really don’t remember me? You were in a band and I told you to let me hear your demo songs so I could give you some feedback but you always forgot to give them to me.”

               “Oh, oh, oh,” said Herb. “Yeah.” The woman still didn’t look familiar and he had no idea what her name might be, but he did remember consciously choosing not to send one of his coworkers his band’s demos because he did not want to hear that coworker’s feedback. This woman, apparently, had been that coworker. Herb hadn’t been in a band for at least twelve years, so if he had worked with this woman twelve years ago, he would have been twenty-three at the time, which was around the time he’d been employed at Underbrush, which, at the time, was the only fully vegan restaurant in Multioak. “We worked together at Underbrush,” he said.

               The woman’s face cycled from confusion to irritation. “No, we didn’t,” she said. “I’ve never worked at Underbrush. I don’t even know what Underbrush is.”

               “It was a vegan restaurant,” said Herb. “The only one in Multioak back then. It’s closed now.”

               “I’m not vegan,” said the woman.

               “Neither am I,” said Herb. “I just worked there. So where did we work together? When was this?”

               “I can’t believe it,” said the woman. “You really don’t remember me. We worked together almost every day. We had basically the same schedule.”

               Herb hadn’t worked that many places. There were only so many places it could be. “Was it at Effortless Insurance?” he asked.

               “You do remember,” said the woman, her self-doubt replaced with a bright smile.

               “But I wasn’t in a band while I worked there,” said Herb.

               “Right,” said the woman. “I wanted to hear the demos of your former band.”

               “You wanted to give me feedback on demos of a band that didn’t exist anymore?”

               “Yes,” said the woman. “So you could take my advice and have better luck with your next band.”

               “Well, I definitely remember you,” said Herb. “But, I’m sorry, your name still escapes me. I’m bad with names.” He wasn’t bad with names.

               The brightness of the woman’s smiled dimmed a few notches. “It’s Gina,” she said.

               “Gina! Right!” Herb bonked his forehead with his knuckles, a gesture which seemed to land with Gina. But it was all theater. Herb didn’t remember any Ginas, not even Ginas other than this one, except for a few famous Ginas whom he had never met and only knew of.

               “Speaking of names,” said Gina. “Can you believe some of the other people at this party? I saw Hal Brigolek in there. I shook hands with Ross Gallup!”

               “Wow,” said Herb. He didn’t know who those people were.

“How did you score an invitation?” asked Gina. “Are you rich now? Are you powerful? You know, by Multioak standards, I mean.”

“No, not rich or powerful,” said Herb. “Not by anyone’s standards. My daughter goes to the same school as Anne’s daughter. I think Anne invited most or all of the other parents with kids in her daughter’s class. But most of the rest of those parents are used to this kind of party. I’m not. My daughter is only able to go to that school because of a special scholarship. I could never afford it otherwise.”

“Is your daughter a genius or something?” asked Gina.

“Yeah,” said Herb. “By Multioak standards.”

Gina laughed. “Well, even though it took you a little too long to remember me, I’m still happy you’re here,” she said. She paused. “It’s cold out here.” She pressed the backs of her hands against either side of her neck, which was a warming technique Herb didn’t think he’d ever seen before.

“Do you want to go back inside?” asked Herb. He was hoping that, once inside, Gina would continue to talk to him for a little bit so the other guests could see him socializing and reconsider some of their possible feelings about him.

“Yes,” she said. “But before we do, there’s something else I need to talk to you about. It’s actually kind of the main reason I was happy to see you. Happy and relieved. Because I need some help. I’m actually pretty desperate.”

Herb did not like the sound of this. But maybe she was exaggerating? Maybe for comedic effect? Maybe it would turn out the thing Gina needed help with was trivial and, when she revealed what it was, she and Herb would share a chuckle over the seriousness with which she had initially presented it. “I’ll help if I can,” said Herb. “But I don’t know if I can.”

“But you’re on my side, right?” asked Gina.

“As opposed to who?” asked Herb. “If I’m on your side, whose side am I not on?”

“Everyone in there,” said Gina, waving her hand in the direction of the party happening in the indoor warmth.

“Why would you be against them?” asked Herb.

“Because I’m not a guest,” said Gina. “I’m the hired entertainment. And I know you are a guest, but you’re some kind of pity guest or something, you’re not like them. I saw how no one was really talking to you in there.”

“I don’t think it’s pity, exactly,” said Herb. “I just think Anne was being polite when she invited me, and I didn’t think I’d fit in, but I just wanted to see what these kinds of parties are like, because who knows if I’ll ever be invited to another one?”

“Right,” said Gina. “So you’re more like me than you’re like anyone in there. So you should be on my side. Not to mention we’re former coworkers, and we’ve known each other for years. I mean, I almost listened to your band’s demos and gave you feedback on them! That has to count for something.”

“But what do you want me to do?” asked Herb, choosing to sidestep the issue of how bonded to each other he and Gina were.

“I need you to help me trick them,” said Gina.

“Who?” asked Herb. “All of them? You need me to help you trick everyone at the party?”

“Yes,” said Gina. “Anne and all the guests. Except for you, obviously. Will you do it?”

“I don’t think I should,” said Herb. “I mean, I still don’t know what you’re asking of me.”

“OK, don’t say ‘no’ yet,” said Gina. “I’ll explain. So I’m the hired entertainment, right? That’s why I’m here. I don’t know Anne. She just hired me based on some stuff I was saying online. She found some stuff I’d written about something I said I can do, so she offered to pay me to come demonstrate what I said I can do for her and her guests at this party, and I would have admitted that I can’t really do it, but she offered me a lot of money, so I couldn’t resist, I figured I had enough time to come up with a way to fake it, to make it look like I can do something I can’t really do, but nothing ever occurred to me, and now I’m here and I don’t know how I’m going to fake it and I’ve only got a couple hours before I either have to do it or admit I can’t do it or trick everyone except you into thinking I can do it, so I’m still hoping I can go with that last option because that will mean I don’t get embarrassed in front of all these important people and don’t have to return the money.”

“So, wait,” said Herb. “You don’t even know how you want me to help you trick everyone? You want me to come up with a way to trick them?”

“I want you to help me come up with a way to trick them,” said Gina. “I want us to put our heads together and come up with a foolproof plan.”

Herb regretted seeking the solitude of the garden. Sipping a drink in a corner and clutching at every stranger’s faint acknowledgement was preferable in all ways to being roped into a scheme by a forgotten acquaintance. “I don’t think I’m cut out for this,” said Herb. “I’m not good at this kind of thing. I’m a bad liar. I’m not clever. I don’t even know what you’re trying to convince them you can do.”

“Right!” said Gina. “I forgot to tell you that part. Well, I guess I was waiting to see if you were willing to help me or not. But basically what it boils down to is, like, you know how sometimes you see something that kind of looks like a face? Like in the grain of the wood on a hardwood floor or in the texture on a textured wall? Where you can kind of see maybe an eye and kind of see a mouth and kind of see sort of a nose? And maybe part of it kind of looks like an ear or some hair or maybe a second eye?”

“Yes,” said Herb.

“Yeah, everyone does,” said Gina. “Everyone sees those. I call them ‘nearlyfaces’ because they’re almost faces, but ‘almostface’ is a term someone was already using for something, some kind of cutesy photography project. But my thing is that I say that nearlyfaces are attempts to communicate messages to us, that these faces are straining to be formed so they can communicate those messages, or rather, the faces are manifestations of the messages themselves, but sometimes they get stuck, they don’t quite have what it takes to form the whole face, so the message can’t be transmitted.”

“That doesn’t sound plausible,” said Herb.

“Well, no, it’s not,” said Gina. “It’s fake. I made it up.”

“But how is this entertainment?” asked Herb. “What’s Anne paying you to do?”

“Right, well, so,” said Gina. “So there’s these nearlyfaces. And my thing is I say I can help a nearlyface become a whole face – or ‘wholeface’ – and then it can communicate its message.”

“Like, the face will speak?” asked Herb.

“Yes,” said Gina. “With accompanying facial expressions, because you may not know this, but facial expressions are actually pretty important to communication. It’s not just words, it’s tone of voice, it’s body language, and even, yes, facial expressions.”

“I did know that,” said Herb. “I know that.”

“So, what do you think?” asked Gina. She now stood with the backs of her wrists propped on her hips with her fingers pointed outward, wiggling speculatively. “How do we trick them?”

“I have no idea,” said Herb. It was nice to not have to feign uselessness. He truly did not have even a partial idea of how to trick Anne and her assembled guests into believing that Gina could make nearlyfaces into wholefaces which would then speak their messages.

“Hmm,” said Gina. “Well, the nearlyface that Anne wants me to help speak is in some marks some workmen made on the tile in the shower in her master bathroom. So it’s going to be close quarters in there. Not everyone will fit, so we really only have to trick as many people as can see, which will probably only be twenty or so. Unless the bathroom is huge, which it might be, but still, how many people will have a good enough vantage point to see the nearlyface? Not many. And we can pretend that the nearlyface is very quiet so not everyone will expect to hear. But some people will have to hear it. I don’t think it’ll work to just pretend it’s whispering in my ear and then make up a message. Wouldn’t it be nice if that would work, though? If they were that gullible? Some of them might be, actually, but probably not most of them. There’s always at least a few skeptics that want to discredit things.”

“You mean you’ve tried this before?” asked Herb.

“No, I just mean in general,” said Gina. “There’s always a few skeptics everywhere in general. There’s bound to be.”

“I’m going back inside,” said Herb. Maybe he could initiate a conversation with someone, with a guest he didn’t know. Just go up to them and start talking about something. He wasn’t rich or powerful or important, but that didn’t mean he had nothing to contribute. Hadn’t he had interesting conversations with people even less rich and less powerful and less important than him? He was sure he had, although no perfect examples came to mind.

“But wait!” said Gina, stepping between Herb and the house. “We haven’t come up with anything yet! I still don’t know how I’m going to trick anyone.”

“I told you I can’t think of anything,” said Herb. “I’m not going to tell anyone you’re a fraud, but I think you should tell Anne. What you want to do doesn’t sound possible. Just tell Anne you made it all up. Or tell her you aren’t feeling well or there’s a family emergency and you have to go. You’ll have to give the money back, but you’re going to have to anyway when you can’t do what you said you could do, so you might as well give it back under circumstances where you can salvage a little dignity.”

“What about your daughter?” asked Gina. “She’s a genius, right? Could you call her, explain the situation, and see if she has any ideas?”

“She’s eight,” said Herb. “And she’s not that kind of genius. And I don’t want to teach her to use her gifts dishonestly.”

“All right,” said Gina. “I won’t keep you out here.” She stepped aside, although Herb felt he could have easily scurried around her if he wanted. “But if you think of something, find me and let me know.”

“I won’t think of something,” said Herb.

“But if you do,” said Gina.

“If I do, I’ll tell you,” said Herb. “But I won’t think of something, so don’t expect anything. Don’t get your hopes up.” He left Gina standing in the garden and returned to the party, stepping through the back door and into a room of a temperature suited for a room. Two men and a woman having a conversation near a pedestal with a vase of flowers on it looked at him with the faintest acknowledgement yet, as if they had taken the faint acknowledgement of one person and split it among the three of them.

“Hello,” said Herb, wedging his fingers inside this narrow crack of acknowledgement, prying mightily. “I’m Herb. Have any of you read Clean Start by James Arnst? It’s a novel, and quite a good one.”

“I…have,” said one of the men, seemingly against his will. He wore a gray sweatshirt with the year 1967 printed on it, though he seemed too young for that to be his birth year.

Herb could tell the guests wanted him to move along, to impose on someone else or no one, but that was because he had not yet had enough time to ingratiate himself. “And did you think it was quite good?” asked Herb.

“I suppose,” said the man.

“Then we agree,” said Herb. He would have been happy to discuss the book in more detail, but he didn’t want to exclude the woman and the other man from the conversation. He had demonstrated the existence of common ground between him and another guest, and he hoped this would suggest to the others that the possibility of common ground between him and them may also exist. But he could tell they weren’t ready to help him carry the conversation. They weren’t going to fumble around in search of shared tastes, experiences, or opinions. Herb needed something that would be instantly relatable, but there was only one thing he knew they could all relate to: the party itself. And Herb really only had one piece of interesting information about the party itself. “Did any of you hear about the entertainment Anne has planned for us tonight?”

The woman sighed in the middle of sipping her drink, generating a small flurry of bubbles in her glass. She wore a black bow in her black hair. Was it normal for adult women to wear bows in their hair? Was it abnormal, but in a fashionable way? “We heard,” she said.

Emboldened by this response, Herb directed his third question to the sole member of the group who had not yet spoken to him. “What do you think of it? Doesn’t it seem kind of ‘out there?’”

The other man, who was white-haired and fit, and whose eyes suggested a mild allergic reaction to something nearby, perhaps the flowers in the vase on the pedestal, said, “Par for the course, unfortunately. Not everyone is as thrilled to indulge crackpots for the sake of general amusement, but Anne remains bizarrely committed to doing so. It’s almost enough to make me decline her invitations, but she’s such an inveterate grudge-holder that I don’t dare.”

“Hold on,” said Herb. “You mean she doesn’t actually believe nearlyfaces can be persuaded to talk?”

The woman and the two men stared at Herb.

“I have no idea what that means,” the first man finally said. “But if you’re asking if she actually believes in the abilities of the weirdos and frauds she hires to ‘entertain’ us at these gatherings, then no, she does not. Of course not. Each weirdo is more obviously crazy than the last, each fraud more obviously fraudulent. Anne takes some kind of pleasure out of watching them flail. I don’t. Most of us don’t. But she does, and she’s the host, so the rest of us endure.”

“That one last time was kind of funny,” said the other man.

The woman rolled her eyes. “No, it wasn’t. It was excruciating. It went on forever. I prefer it when they just fail immediately and flee.”

“What was the person last time claiming they could do?” asked Herb.

“Braid firelight,” said the man with allergy eyes.

“What does that mean?” asked Herb.

“We never found out,” said the first man.

“Do any of you know if Anne still pays them?” asked Herb.

“Pays who?” asked the woman.

“The, uh, you know,” said Herb. “The entertainers.”

“I don’t know,” said the woman. “Probably not, since none of them do what they say they’re gonna do.”

“But they do what she wants them to do,” said Herb. “Right? So shouldn’t they get something?”

“No,” said the man in the 1967 sweatshirt. “That would only encourage them. The only positive I can see coming from Anne’s freak shows is that some of them might learn a lesson and, I don’t know, seek help or recognize the error of their ways or feel an ounce of shame for the first time in their lives.”

“Well,” said Herb. “Nice meeting all of you. I just remembered I need to talk to someone else about something.” He turned and strode away, not even really caring all that much that neither the woman nor either of the men said goodbye to him.

He wanted to find Gina. That was who he needed to talk to. Not because he was “on her side” and not because they had been coworkers at some point in the past and not because she thought he had almost let her hear his defunct band’s demos. Not even because he liked her. Herb didn’t like Gina. But he needed to find her because he didn’t approve of what was about to happen to her. It was cruel. Herb would warn anyone against the fate toward which Gina was headed. He thought that any decent person would. And if none of these other guests had the decency to intervene, well, maybe he was against them, and maybe that did put him on Gina’s side whether he liked her or not.

Gina had told Herb to find her if he thought of a way to trick the guests into believing she could make the nearlyface speak its message. The way she said it had made Herb think she would not be difficult to locate, but that did not prove to be the case. Herb wandered from room to room, skirting the edges of social clusters, circles of conversation, groupings centered on verbal interchange. At no point did he feel welcome to join. At no point did anyone offer him more than a glance. But that was all right because he needed to keep moving. Sometimes lone guests would break free and squeeze past Herb, always focused somewhere beyond him. A drunk woman in a turtleneck and tinted glasses paused to look at Herb, but found nothing to hold her and continued on, steadying herself with a hand on his shoulder as if he were a railing. Not a human railing. Just a railing.

In the kitchen, where a man and a woman kissed each other like two people who do not know each other, Herb also found Anne Mustoll. She stood by the open refrigerator and gulped water from a glass bottle. If he couldn’t find Gina, then maybe this was the next best thing. Maybe it was better.

“Anne,” said Herb. He tried to smile warmly, but he didn’t feel warm, so he suspected the attempt failed.

Anne held up one finger so as to conclude her gulping. She finished and put the empty bottle back in the fridge, closing the door so gently that Herb feared it had not achieved a proper seal. He resisted the urge to re-close it.

“Hi, Herb,” said Anne, not hitting the “h” hard enough for Herb’s liking. She wore a loose sweater, leggings, and boots that, had Herb been wearing them, he would have worried they’d scuff the floor. She was forty-six years old. Herb knew this because Anne had a habit of dropping her age into most conversations. He didn’t think she was lying about her age. If anything, she looked younger than forty-six. Herb didn’t know what her husband looked like, but he also knew that Anne made more money than her husband, another fact that regularly found its way into conversations with her or about her. “Are you having a good time?” she asked. “Did you find the garden? Did you enjoy your smoke?”

“Yes,” said Herb, providing two lies and a truth with one word. “But I actually wanted to ask you about tonight’s entertainment.”

“Oh, yes,” said Anne. She widened her eyes and nodded. “Yes, I’m looking forward to it. Have you heard about it, then? Do you know what she’s going to do?”

“I’ve heard a little,” said Herb. “I’ve heard rumors.”

“I’m excited,” said Anne. “Excited and nervous.”

Herb detected no irony in her tone. “So you…you really believe she can do it? You’re not just, like, hoping she’ll humiliate herself so we can all have a laugh?”

“No,” said Anne. The surfaces of her eyeballs became wet, they shone. “No. Why would you ask that? Why would you think that?”

“I’ve never been to one of your parties before,” said Herb. “And some of the other guests were saying that…that you hire, you know, ‘crackpots’ was I think the term they used, and you hire them to come here and try to do things they can’t really do, or to do a bad job trying to trick everyone into thinking they can do things they can’t really do, and that you hire them because you know they’ll fail and you think that’s funny.”

Anne shook her head. “Who said that about me? Who told you all this?”

“I don’t remember their names,” said Herb. “Actually, they never told me their names.”

“Point them out to me,” said Anne. “Whoever they are, with a few possible exceptions, they’re never coming back here. Not for a party or any other reason. I won’t be slandered by my own guests in my own house.”

“Uh, I might remember what they look like,” said Herb. “I’ve just met so many people, and they’re all new so their faces kind of run together…”

“But you believed them?” asked Anne. “That hurts me, Herb.”

“I didn’t know what to believe,” said Herb. “That’s why I’ve been looking all over for you. I didn’t think it was true, but I just wanted to be sure that…that…so you’re saying you really do believe Gina can get the nearlyface to deliver its message?”

“Wow,” said Anne. “You know a lot of specifics.”

“Well, I just kind of pieced it together,” said Herb. “From different people.” He didn’t know why he was reluctant to admit he’d spoken to Gina. Maybe he didn’t want to give Anne the impression that he was on Gina’s side. Which, maybe he wasn’t. If Anne really believed in Gina’s lie and Gina intended to take advantage of Anne’s trust to con her, then no, he wasn’t on Gina’s side.

Anne sighed. She glanced at the kissing pair who then ceased their kissing and exited the kitchen. “Do I believe Gina can get the nearlyface to deliver its message? I want to. I always want to. With all of them. All of the so-called ‘crackpots.’ Wouldn’t it be beautiful if even one of them truly did what they said they could do? Wouldn’t that be incredible? What if tonight is the night, Herb? What if tonight’s the night and you’re here to witness it? How might that change your life? How might that change you?”

Herb had no intention of answering this question. He had a question of his own. “So if you really believe – or want to believe – in the claims of the people you hire to entertain at your parties, why are some of your guests saying you do it in order to make a mockery of them?”

“Because they don’t believe,” said Anne. “And they don’t want to believe. So they can’t imagine someone as successful and powerful and important as myself might believe or want to believe. So they think, ‘Well, hmm, why would I hire someone making hard-to-believe claims about their own abilities to entertain at one of my parties?’ And the only answer they can come up with is: to laugh at them when they fail. So they ascribe their own hypothetical motives to me.”

“But what you want is for Gina to succeed,” said Herb.

“Of course,” said Anne. “Of course.”

“And you’ll pay her even if she fails as long as she gives it a sincere attempt?”

“What?” asked Anne. “No, of course not. Where would you get that idea? If she fails, I’ll do the same thing to her that I’ve done to all the others who have disappointed me, which is literally all of the others. I’ll ruin her.”

So Herb again set off in search of Gina. He no longer knew whose side he was on. He couldn’t condone Gina’s dishonesty, but neither could he condone the harshness of Anne’s punishments inflicted on people who didn’t turn out to be able to do things that they obviously would not be able to do no matter what their claims. So maybe he was just on the side of goodness. The side of good. The good side. He was on the good side, and if he was to be all alone on the good side, then so be it. And as the sole proponent of goodness present at the party, it was incumbent upon Herb to find Gina and convince her not to attempt to trick Anne. Maybe if she approached Anne now and apologized, Anne would be willing to simply let her go without paying her instead of marshalling her considerable resources to ruin Gina’s life.

But Gina was still nowhere to be found. Herb wondered what had become of her. Was she deliberately avoiding him? Was she secluded in a bedroom, preparing for her performance? Was she outside again? Was she still outside?

Hesitant to start opening doors in other parts of the house without permission, Herb decided to check for Gina outside again first. He returned to the garden, which was now colder. Gina was not there, but an old, jowly man smoking a cigarette was. He wore dark slacks and a windbreaker zipped to his white-stubbled chin. He projected an air of someone who would suffer from non-life-threatening ailments well into his nineties and possibly beyond. A breeze that Herb could not feel stirred the man’s fine hair.

When the old man sensed Herb’s presence, he said, “You a gambling man?”

“Me?” asked Herb. “No, not really. Why?”

“I guess you don’t have to be a gambling man to gamble,” said the old man. “So would you like to gamble despite not being a gambling man? Would you like to temporarily become a man who is gambling?”

“What would we be betting on?” asked Herb. He wasn’t interested in betting, just curious and willing to pause his search for Gina for a few moments to satisfy that curiosity.

“I think I know who tonight’s sucker is,” said the old man. “In fact, I’m so confident that I’ll give you the field.”

“The field?”

“Yeah,” said the old man. “If I’m right about who the sucker is, then I win. But if it’s anyone other than who I think it is, then you win. ‘The field’ is everyone other than who I think the sucker is.”

“But what’s ‘the sucker?’” asked Herb. “What are you talking about?”

“You know,” said the old man. He turned and squinted at Herb’s face. “Yeah, you know. You’ve been here before. I recognize you. ‘The sucker.’ You know. The first-time guest who gets talked into helping the fake ‘entertainment.’ The one who willingly aligns with the scammer against Anne, revealing the very duplicitousness that caused Anne to choose them as the sucker in the first place. Someone from the community Anne’s singled out for public degradation and abasement. You know.”

“Oh yeah,” said Herb, struggling to keep his insides from dissolving, leaking out of his pores, and evaporating, gaseous organs rising toward the stars in the light of bulbs connected to motion-detecting sensors and mounted on the eaves of Anne’s enormous home. “Oh yeah,” he said again, winning the battle. His insides had not dissolved, nor would they. “And who do you think it is?”

“Are we betting?” asked the old man.

“Maybe,” said Herb. “Depends who you think it is.”

“I think it’s that guy in the suit,” said the old man.

“That’s me,” said Herb. “I’m the guy in the suit.”

The old man squinted again, but this time directed his squint down over Herb’s clothing, taking in the suit. “No,” he said. “It’s a different guy. There must be two guys in suits. You and someone else. I think the other guy in a suit is the sucker. The one no one’s talking to.” He switched his cigarette from his right hand to his left.

“That’s me,” said Herb. “No one’s talking to me.”

“I’m talking to you,” said the old man. “Aren’t I?” He puffed his cigarette. “Actually, bet’s off. Forget I mentioned it. I don’t know what I’m talking about. Actually, I’m just pulling your leg. Just do whatever you were gonna do. Do what you think is right, that’s my motto, and I tend to just ignore what other people say, especially people I don’t know, especially if they seem old and out of touch. And I never go spreading the nonsense other people say. I don’t tell my friends, I don’t tell my wife, I don’t tell, oh, I dunno, the host of a party I’m at, especially if that host is infamous for holding grudges against people who displease her in even tiny ways, like bothering her with some overheard nonsense. No, I just forget any nonsense I hear as soon as I can and don’t change my plans in any way.”

Herb swiveled on his heel and headed back inside where Gina immediately brushed past him and whispered that he should meet her at the top of the back staircase in five minutes. By the time Herb had turned to ask where the back staircase was, Gina had vanished. It took him more than five minutes to locate a staircase that he thought could reasonably be considered the “back staircase.” He had crossed several thresholds that felt off-limits in order to reach the staircase, but the old man’s accidental revelations had left Herb feeling disinclined to follow any of Anne’s rules, actual or imagined.

In the dark hallway at the top of the stairs, Gina waited for Herb next to a portrait of Anne Mustoll’s daughter. The portrait was so flattering as to be inaccurate.

“So?” said Gina. “Have you thought of a way to trick the guests? The entertainment is supposed to start at any moment and I’ve still got nothing. You’re my only hope, Herb. I’m so nervous. Look at how badly my hands are shaking.” She held up her left hand. It shook.

“I do have an idea,” said Herb.

“You do?” asked Gina. “What is it?”

“Just leave it to me,” said Herb. “I’ll handle everything. I’ll do it all.”

“But what is it?” asked Gina. “So I know what to look for.”

“I said I’ll do it all,” said Herb. “You won’t have to do anything.”

“But I’m the one who’s supposed to be convincing the nearlyface to talk,” said Gina. “I won’t get paid if you trick Anne into thinking you did it.”

“I don’t have time to explain everything,” said Herb. “Just trust me. I’ll make it look like you’ve convinced the nearlyface to deliver its message, everyone will be fooled, you’ll get paid, and everything will be fine.”

Gina smiled. Did Herb detect a trace of guilt in that smile? Even a hint of remorse? Had he ever worked with this person at any point in his life? “Thank you,” she said. “I’m counting on you!”

Herb went back downstairs and pretended to mingle, strolling around as if perpetually between conversations, conversing with no one. He knew that he could just leave. That he probably should leave. But if Anne wanted to ruin his life, she was certainly influential enough to do so whether he left or stayed, and at least if he stayed, he had an opportunity to spoil her evening. Herb didn’t know why Anne had chosen him to be “the sucker,” as the old man had referred to Herb’s unwitting role at the party, but he suspected it had something to do with their daughters. Maybe Anne resented the praise Herb’s daughter received, all the genius talk, the way it overshadowed her daughter’s more modest accomplishments. Or maybe none what the old man had said was true. Maybe the old man was wrong, and Anne was telling the truth. Maybe the people he’d spoken to when he’d come in from his first encounter with Gina were correct. Maybe those people, Anne, and the old man were all lying. Maybe they were all mistaken. In any case, Herb had to see this through. He had to find out what would happen if he joined the rest of the guests upstairs in the master bathroom for Gina’s performance and did nothing to help her.

After much longer than Herb had anticipated given Gina’s urgency at their back staircase rendezvous, word began to spread among the guests that it was time to go upstairs, and people began to move toward the grand staircase in the large, open entryway just inside the front door of the house. Herb now thought of it as “the front staircase” as he joined the migrating crowd. No one paid him any special amount of attention, nor any normal amount of attention. Was this suspicious? Was it just rude? Was it neither?

Upstairs, the guests proceeded past many closed rooms to the end of a long hallway where the door to Anne’s master bedroom – predictably spacious – stood open. Anne was positioned just inside the doorway directing traffic and selecting certain people for prime viewing positions in the bathroom itself. Herb reflected that if Anne didn’t choose him for the bathroom, then he could safely categorize the old man’s ramblings as the ramblings of an old man, let go of his paranoia, and go back to being comfortably on the side of good in a way that did not directly affect him. Except for the fact that in one of the possible scenarios, Gina would be relying on him to save her, he would not be positioned close enough to even try, and Anne would ruin her life. But there were just too many variables. Herb had been fed too much contradictory information. No one should expect anything of him given the circumstances, even if they weren’t fully aware of all the circumstances.

“Oh, Herb!” said Anne, touching his shoulder as he entered the bedroom. “I definitely want you to be present in the bathroom, given our conversation from earlier. If – no – when something happens, I want you to be right there to see!”

Herb joined the small group in the bathroom. Other than Gina, who stood by the shower looking anxious, Herb knew nothing about any of the other people Anne had granted a favorable vantage point, so he couldn’t make any inferences about what their presence in the bathroom might mean. What if the old man had been right about everything except for his theory about the sucker’s identity? What if one of these other people was the sucker? But no, Gina had attempted to enlist Herb to help her. And succeeded in doing so, as far as she knew. He wondered how much she would be paid for her role in degrading him, abasing him, and revealing his duplicitousness. Or trying to, anyway. Would she still be paid if he ruined her attempt to degrade him, abase him, and reveal his duplicitousness? Or would Anne punish that variety of failure in the same way she claimed to punish entertainers who couldn’t do what they said they could?

Anne came into the bathroom and stood next to Gina, placing a steadying hand on Gina’s arm. “All right, all right,” she said. “I hope everyone out in the bedroom can hear me?”

A voice from the bedroom said, “We can!”

Herb looked over his shoulder and was surprised to see that plenty of room remained in the bathroom. At least ten more people could have been comfortably allowed. Guests in the bedroom leaned forward to peer through the doorway. Directly opposite the doorway, the man in the “1967” sweatshirt leaned against a dresser set on the far wall and held his phone up as if filming.

“All right,” said Anne. “In a moment, I am going to open the shower door. Inside, you will see some markings on the tile caused by some clumsy workmen. I was going to call the company they work for and insist that they come back and repair the damage, but, well, you’ll see it for yourselves shortly, but before I had a chance to call, I noticed that the markings, if viewed in a certain way, almost look like a face. When taken together, not as separate markings, but as a set of markings that belong together, they nearly look like a face. Like a human face, specifically, or humanoid, at the very least.”

She paused, but did not seem to expect anyone to comment, and no one did.

“I won’t bore you with the details of how I discovered my new friend Gina, here, but suffice to say, Gina is an expert on what she calls – and I think this is so cute – but what she calls ‘nearlyfaces.’ It turns out that, according to Gina, nearlyfaces form in not-quite-successful attempts to convey an important message to someone. In this case, we have to assume that message is for me since it formed in my shower. Now, there’s a lot more to it, and we’ll be happy to discuss it after Gina does her thing, but for now, I’m just too eager to get started. So what’s going to happen is I’m going to open the shower door, revealing the nearlyface. We would like all of you to maintain silence. Not complete silence, a little natural noise is OK, but don’t speak, at least, because Gina needs to concentrate on the nearlyface very intently in order to assist it in its transformation into a wholeface, at which point silence will be even more important because the nearlyfaces, when they become wholefaces and speak their messages, don’t always speak very loudly, although this one might, who knows? Anyway, let’s be quiet now.” She paused, listening to the sustained quiet which had settled over the observing guests as soon as she began to speak. “All right, and I’m going to open the shower door, and then this will become Gina and the nearlyface’s show.” Gina smiled without parting her lips. Herb saw a droplet of sweat at the corner of one eyebrow. “And I’m opening the door now,” said Anne. She took hold of the shower door and slid it open.

The shower was larger than the walk-in closet from the first house Herb had owned before he had to downsize for reasons he didn’t like thinking about. He also noticed the impressive diameter of the showerhead. The tile on the shower walls was black, green, and white, and arranged in a configuration that seemed random but probably wasn’t. His daughter would have been able to see the pattern. Herb couldn’t. But he could see the nearlyface. The markings that composed the nearlyface were mostly on two pieces of adjacent white tile and partially on a third piece of green tile.

The markings did, Herb had to admit, kind of look like a face, but a little rough, a little incomplete. He could kind of see maybe an eye and kind of see a mouth and kind of see sort of a nose. And maybe part of it kind of looked like an ear or some hair or maybe a second eye.

Herb looked to Gina to see how she was reacting to the big reveal. She was not reacting at all. She was not even looking at the nearlyface. She was staring directly at Herb, her eyes delving into him. And then Anne, who had also looked to Gina for her reaction, saw her staring at Herb, and she turned her gaze to him as well. Others in the bathroom followed suit, fixing their eyes where Gina and Anne had fixed theirs, which was upon Herb. He didn’t want to turn around to see, but Herb had to imagine the guests behind him, the guests peering through the doorway were looking at him, too. He was the center of attention. The center of focus. The center of their scrutiny.

In a way, it made sense. He had promised Gina that he would handle the process of tricking Anne and the rest of the guests into believing that Gina was not a fraud, so she was looking at him in expectation that he would do that, although Herb could not read that expectation in the expression on her face. So, that’s why Gina was looking at him. Probably. And as the ostensible star of the show, it made sense that those looking first at Gina would then, upon seeing her absorbed with Herb, mimic her.

But what were they thinking? Why did they think Gina was looking at him? How did they interpret all of this? There were no signs. Only the sensation of being intensely, not watched, but looked at. Were they waiting for him to do something? Did they want him to crumble, to collapse, to flee? Did they want him to justify their interest, reward them for their examination?

As the collective concentration of the party remained fixed on Herb, and as the intensity of that concentration seemed to increase, his face began to burn, then tingle. Herb felt his face begin to cohere, then, in a way that it never had before. He felt his face clarify, becoming more defined, new details revealed, new details developing, his features forming connections between themselves in a way that felt correct, even necessary. But there was something else happening as well, a movement in his core. Not his core as in the muscles in the midsection of his body, but his core as in the core of his being, which also happened to feel like it was located in the midsection of his body. This movement, Herb realized, was the launching of a slow vessel – he thought of it as a vessel – from his core, yes, but destined for his tongue. It was, he realized, a message.

His first impulse was to swallow the message, to conceal it, to not give Anne the satisfaction of hearing it delivered, but his second impulse was to utterly reject his first impulse, because he wanted to deliver the message, oh, how he wanted to, it was all he wanted. And as his face became more and more whole, the vessel bearing the message – or maybe the vessel was the message – picked up speed. And then, abruptly, his face was whole. Herb had, for the first time in his life, a face that was truly whole. A whole face. And the message was on his tongue. All he needed to do was speak it, and he spoke it.

“Invest heavily in Ousterlin Group, Incorporated,” said Herb.

When Herb got home, his daughter was still awake, lounging on the couch and watching cartoons. “Why is she not in bed?” asked Herb.

“She tricked me,” said the babysitter.

“That’s my girl,” said Herb.

“Whose side are you on?” asked the babysitter. She sounded genuinely upset.

Herb didn’t know how to answer. The babysitter’s question was more fascinating than she knew.

Herb’s daughter looked up at him for the first time since he’d entered the house. She wrinkled her nose. “Ew, Dad. What happened to your face?”