Hilda Kupferman saw fit to invite me to her annual party for interesting people. It sounded awful but to her credit, at least, her definition of interesting did not measure wealth or power, but simply people who had caught her fancy during the past year. Of course, some people were invited back year after year on the basis of something they had done, or something that had happened to them, years ago. I, myself, had been bitten by a wolf on a camping trip a while back, and she never tired of asking me questions about the incident. There was really only so much I had to say, so I had begun to embellish it. “Under the wan moonlight, he tore at my arm’s flesh with the savagery of a god, but my free had found a stone and I pounded his skull with all my might. In no time the wolf lay whimpering at my feet, my blood dripping from its fangs,” I said. Hilda’s eyes were popping out of her head with delight. “Oh, Mr. Rowley, you are certainly a brave man. I am honored that you have agreed to grace us with your presence tonight,” she said. The others gathered around her gave me an approving round of applause. Of course, the story I had told was far from the truth. Some wild furry animal, with a tongue like a dog’s, had licked my face as I slept on a mountain years ago. That’s all I really know. But I liked being invited to the party. I was introduced to an elderly, aristocratic lady by the name of Gertrude Falk. Mrs. Falk had been captured by a tribe of headhunters in Borneo while researching a certain rare orchid. She wasn’t violated in any way. On the contrary, it soon became apparent that they believed her to be their queen, sent to them from the stars. She stayed there ten years, until she had converted them into the most peace-loving, gentlest people on earth. She finished her story with tears in her eyes, and Hilda said, grabbing Mrs. Falk’s shoulders, “She’s a saint.” I spotted the bar and a long table of canapés. As I was filling up my plate, a man standing next to me was saying to himself, “Yes, sir. No, sir. They are all dead, Captain, every last one.” He was nibbling little crab cakes nervously, glancing this way and that. He didn’t even see me standing right in front of him. He didn’t look like he was ready to tell his story, so I walked away, uncertain of what to do with myself. A pretty woman stood along by the door, staring down into her drink. I walked up to her, but didn’t say anything. She didn’t seem to mind my being there, so I just stayed. A man crawled by on his hands and knees, saying, “Water, water, all my riches for a cup of water.” Hilda Kupferman was shrieking in laughter or horror somewhere on the far side of the room. The girl beside me finally lifter her head and said, “Do you believe in miracles?” “I suppose I do,” I said, “I mean, almost everything is a miracle when you think about it.” “That’s what I figured you’d say,” she said. The man from the bar walked by saying, “The reinforcements are not on their way, Captain. They were all slaughtered on the beach. I’m afraid it’s juts you and me, and the enemy surrounds us as far as the eye can see.” “What about truth? Do you think there is such a thing, and can we ever know it?” she said. “You’re kind of fresh,” I said. “I don’t even know your name.” “That’s what I mean,” she said, “you can’t know it. There’s no way you’ll ever know it. It’s like a perfume, it’s here, and then it’s gone.” “Oh well, it’s nice to meet you, or not meet you,” I said. “My name’s Dan, and, once, on a mountain as I was sleeping under the moonlight, something licked my face, and it was a wolf or a mouse or a lamb, or maybe it was your perfume carrying your name on its nameless journey through time.”