They were, I gathered, his friends, people who had spent two years enjoying the swimming pool and the top-shelf liquor in a house none of them had contributed a cent toward, and now they came filing out the front door in twos and threes, clutching their jackets, keeping their eyes down, hurrying past the police cruiser and Arthur and me and the drilling of the locksmith, toward their expensive cars parked along the curb.

Not one of them looked at Julian as they left.

That was the thing I noticed.

He stood there in his silk robe in the doorway of his party, and his friends streamed past him into the night without meeting his eyes, without a word of goodbye or support, evaporating like water on hot stone the instant the house stopped being a place where good things were free.

I did not feel triumphant, watching it.