A collective gasp went through the guests — the same friends in linen and gold watches who had laughed at my wet dress twenty minutes before — and, as one organism, they began edging toward the gangway, desperate to detach their own names from the sinking one.

It is a thing worth seeing at least once, how fast a crowd that will not defend you will also not go down with the people who wronged you.

Loyalty, in that set, has the shelf life of a cut flower.

I watched them go — the woman who had complimented Theodora’s earrings an hour earlier now not quite able to meet her eye, the man who had laughed loudest at my dress now studying the gangway with tremendous interest.

Not one of them had said a word when the martini went over my knees.

Not one of them had made a sound when Theodora’s palm found my shoulder.