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She leans out of the kitchen enough to look down the hall, straightens, and shakes her head. “I’ll try to have your backs during this meal, but you two need to be aware of how serious this is.”

“Oh, believe me, we’ve thought of nothing else.”

The front doorbell peals, and I glance down the hall. Bastien answers it with board games still under his arm. The man is in his mid-sixties with white hair, and his wife floats rather than walks into the entranceway like she’s already come to the party pre-sauced.

“Arthur Hughes and his wife Nell,” Molly supplies in an undertone. “He’s the source of the rot in this place. Also, you are never on first-name terms with him.”

“Roger that.” I go back into the kitchen and start filling wine glasses to have them at the ready for when Bastien comes to find them and check on the food prep. One by one, Bastien’s colleagues straggle in to meet me while I’m cooking. Tracey Ripple is young and enthusiastic. She greets me with a hug, a barrage of words, and takes a picture of us together for her social media account. “I study social media and its effect on girls,” she says. “It’s kind of a crowded lane, though.”

“Very crowded indeed.” The man who’s just entered the kitchen is lean, with dark hair. Tracey deflates.

“But very valuable,” I say, adding a touch of seasoning. “Especially to the girls in question. And what do you study…?” I let it go.

“Lincoln Preston. I’m here to stamp out racism.”

“In my kitchen?” I pointedly look around. “You know,” I say, gesturing toward him with a wooden spoon, “Bastien is Métis. Apparently it’s an actual racial category in Canada. You should talk to him about his experiences as a racial minority. Especially coming here and discovering that the racial categories he used to define himself with were a construction that hasn’t been recognized. I’m sure there’s a great deal you can get out of how racial groups reconstruct their identities after they move outside the places where there is a social construction for them to make sense.” I’m proud of myself. I did hours of research on the Métis for my final paper for Bastien’s class, and the chance to deploy it feels delicious.

“I’m sure it’s very interesting,” he says in a tone of voice that says it’s not.

“You should probably get out there and meet people,” Tracey says in her bright voice. “I can cover the stove.” Her eyes go in the direction of Preston. Please, she mouths.

I roll my eyes and give her my apron and a set of instructions and tell her that I’ll be back in five minutes.

When the doorbell rings again, I’m the one to answer it. Delphine Mercier is standing on the doorstep. She looks a little tired, but she smiles at me brightly. “Levi!” She kisses me on both cheeks. “So glad you were able to work things out.” She hands me two bottles of wine. “The French is for you and Bastien alone. This other one is local garbage. Give it to the Americans. They don’t know any better. Bastien! Chéri!” She kisses him effusively and peers into the living room. “The usual suspects. Oh, look. Julia Spring. Lucky you.”

“She was the first to arrive,” I say in an undertone.

“Because she’s a cunt,” Delphine murmurs back to me without breaking her smile. “Molly!” she calls, drifting away from me.

I whisper the wine instructions to Bastien and send him to hide the good wine and open the bad stuff while I make a sortie into our living room.

Julia and Preston and Hughes end up in a tight cluster by the window, speaking low. Julia tenses when Delphine approaches her. Their lips curl in mutual contempt briefly.

“What a pleasant surprise,” Julia says. Her tone says that it’s not.

“Why would I miss it? I don’t mean to stereotype, but the gays give the best parties, don’t you think?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Molly roll her eyes.

“I think,” Preston says, “that it is dangerous to stereotype people. But then again, that is exactly what sociology does so well, doesn’t it? Validate the stereotypes we all have, no matter how harmful.” He smiles.

“You are absolutely correct, monsieur. I am sure there are very boring gays who do not throw good parties. I simply have always refused to know them.” She looks him up and down. “You would probably know them, though.”

Oh, shit. Shots fired.

She turns to me. “Plus de vin,” she tells me. “Le français.” She mimes the wine glass and I put together the meaning.

I’m almost out of the living room when Nell Hughes stops me. Her smile is porcelain-perfect.

“I didn’t realize you were a friend of Delphine’s,” she says. She eyes me up and down and I can see the calculation.

And there it is. I keep my hands steady. “She’s more Bastien’s friend, but she’s definitely made our lives more interesting.”

I glance over my shoulder at Delphine. She’s every inch holding her own. “Isn’t it monstrous,” she says, “that the pounding was designed to make newcomers feel welcome, and has been contorted into an instrument designed to benefit those already in power? Well, of course, in my country, we had opinions about that. It’s so fascinating that you have not thought through the consequences of it.”

“Of course.” Nell smiles blandly, drawing my attention back to her. Her breath smells like alcohol. “But she is certainly a useful friend to have.”

“Oh, yes. What she doesn’t know about wine isn’t worth knowing.” I take the hit. I know that just by pretending I don’t know what she means, I’ve confirmed her theory. Because honestly, what is a hooker supposed to say? Yeah, Delphine pimped me out to your husband last year?