The champagne towers caught the light like frozen waterfalls. Crystal flutes stacked seven high, each one filled with something pale and effervescent that cost more than most men earned in a year. Thomas Blackwell stood on the terrace of his West Egg mansion and watched the party spill into the garden below, a sea of silk and sequins and laughter that rose into the Long Island summer night like incense.

He did not drink the champagne. He never drank at his own parties. He stood on the terrace with a glass of water in his hand and watched other people drink, and laughed, and loved, and wasted their lives in the most beautiful way possible.

That was the trick, wasn't it? The party was everything. The music, the lights, the way the women's dresses caught the breeze like wings. But the party was also nothing. A collection of faces he barely knew, speaking words he barely heard, performing a ritual of excess that meant precisely nothing to him.

Except for the man in the corner.

Thomas had seen him arrive about an hour ago. He had come alone, as always, and he had gone directly to the far corner of the ballroom where the shadows were deepest. He was a tall man with broad shoulders and a thick black beard that seemed absurd against the clean-shaven fashion of the age. He wore a dark suit that was expensive but old-fashioned, the kind of suit that suggested a man who bought his clothes from a tailor who had been dead for twenty years.

He did not dance. He did not drink. He simply sat in the corner and watched Thomas.

Thomas told himself not to look at him. He told himself to go back inside, join the crowd, laugh at a joke he would not remember the next morning. But his feet carried him across the terrace and down the marble steps and through the open French doors into the ballroom, and he found himself walking toward the corner where the bearded man sat.

The jazz band had moved to a slower number. Something with a trumpet that sounded like it was crying. The bearded man did not look up as Thomas approached. He was staring at his hands, which were folded in his lap like a monk's.

"Can I help you?" the bearded man said. His voice was soft, almost gentle.

"I don't think we've met."

"No," the bearded man said. "I don't think we have. Or perhaps we have, and you've simply forgotten. Forgetting is so easy, isn't it? You forget names, you forget faces, you forget the things that matter. And then one night you're standing in your own house, surrounded by three hundred people, and you realize you don't know any of them. Not really. And you don't really know yourself."

Thomas felt a coldness move through him, like ice water poured into his chest. "Who are you?"

The bearded man looked up. His eyes were dark. Not the dark of night, but the dark of a room with all the lights turned off. "I am the shadow that follows you, Thomas. The part of you that stays behind when the rest of you goes out to play. I am the voice that whispers in the quiet moments, when the music stops and the guests go home and you're standing alone in your great empty house, wondering what it all means."

"It means nothing," Thomas said. "That's the point. It's supposed to mean nothing. That's what makes it beautiful."

The bearded man smiled. It was not a kind smile. "Is that what you tell yourself? That the meaninglessness is the beauty? That's a very rich person's way of thinking, Thomas. Very convenient. It lets you throw parties and drink champagne and sleep in a bed that's too big for one person, and never have to ask yourself what you're running from."

Thomas turned away. He walked back across the ballroom, through the crowd of laughing, drinking, dancing people, and out onto the terrace again. The Long Island water was dark beyond the garden lights, and the summer air was warm and thick with the smell of jasmine.

He stood at the edge of the terrace and looked down at the water. And in the dark surface, he saw a reflection that was not his own.

A man with a thick black beard stood behind him in the water, looking over his shoulder at the party below. Thomas turned around. No one was there. He looked back at the water. The bearded man was still there, smiling, his reflection rippling in the dark surface like a stone dropped into a pond.

"You can't hide forever, Thomas," the reflection said. Its voice came from the water, bubbling up like something rising from the bottom. "The party will end. The guests will go home. The music will stop. And then you'll be alone with me. Again. Always."

Thomas gripped the terrace railing until his knuckles turned white. "Go away," he whispered.

The reflection laughed. It was a beautiful sound, like champagne bubbles rising in a glass. "I can't go away, Thomas. I'm you. I'm the part of you that remembers everything you've forgotten. Every lie you've told. Every person you've used. Every night you've woken up in a stranger's bed not remembering how you got there."

Thomas closed his eyes. When he opened them, the reflection was gone. The water was dark and still, showing only his own face—tired, hollow, older than thirty-five years had any right to make a man.

He went back inside. The party was still going. The champagne was still flowing. The women were still laughing, their dresses catching the light like wings. Thomas picked up a glass of champagne from a passing tray and drank it in one swallow. It tasted like ash.

He stood in the center of the ballroom, surrounded by three hundred people, and felt more alone than he had ever felt in his life. And in the far corner of the room, behind a potted palm, he saw the faintest outline of a beard, and heard the softest sound of a man smiling.