I walked into her parlor with the other guests.  We were a mass so it seemed like we were all together.  I was late to a joke so my laughter lingered too long.  I was never a comfortable guest; of course I was worse as a host.  I leaned gingerly against a post that held a bust of the guest of honor, when he was much younger.   A girl much younger than me touched my brow.  I don’t know why she did this; she just did, and then she disappeared.  

He was a handsome man, when they made the bust; he achieved his fame from a book he published in his twenties.  It offered a theory of human nature that had been offered many times before, but in different words.  I don’t know why this brought him fame or why his fame lingered so long, but it did.

Hers was the last parlor in the city.  The other parlors faded like so many other fads, but hers did not.  And it was not just a group of aging friends who gathered here but the young found something fresh and alive in this room.  I don’t know why they still sought her company, but they did.

She invited me to sit next to her.  She was aging in a way that made me long to be elderly.  She smelled of lilacs.  She said, “I notice you alone.”  I didn’t know if that meant that I was alone or that she was alone.  Either way she had a way of making the obvious seem like a secret.  She looked at me and smiled, “You really have three choices, darling, to connect with others, to connect others to each other, or to connect others to themselves.”

“The network is god, darling, and you must serve it or die.”