The party is glorious. Everybody is drunk on victory, biting on cinnamon cake and each other’s necks. Pairs swing and dance. The children imitate between great round tables decked with plates and glasses brimmed with delicacies and champagne. Red-cheeked women with red-cheeked babies on their hips mingle by the open glass door into the gardens where the men smoke against the gazebo. Usually, the children would stay home, or would make me desire to split their heads (or my own) in two. Tonight, somehow I don’t mind them. There seems to be a theme tonight, reoccurring, and a constant all at once. I’m never fully not touching her. A hand in hers, at her back, in her hair. Her own in my shirt, or on my feverish neck.