"Tell me," she asked, "are you here with someone?"
I hesitated, not because the question was difficult but because I disliked what she seemed to be asking beneath it. Did I belong to someone important? Had another person's influence purchased my right to stand in this place?
"Yes," I answered.
Her eyebrows lifted. "Anyone I might know?"
"Possibly."
The smile on her face tightened. "You're being rather mysterious for someone nobody seems to recognize."
I almost laughed at the absurdity of it. I had answered her questions politely. I simply hadn't given her a name she could place on an invisible social ladder. To Chloe, that appeared to be an act of defiance. She wanted information that would let her calculate how respectfully she needed to treat me. Without it, she was becoming impatient.
"I'm not trying to be mysterious," I said.
She glanced toward the small group of guests now watching us. "Well, that's a relief. People might start imagining you're someone important."
A man near the bar shifted his stance. Another guest looked down at her phone, although the screen remained dark. It was the uncomfortable choreography of people witnessing something unkind and hoping somebody else would intervene. I wondered whether Chloe mistook their silence for approval.
"I don't think there's anything wrong with being ordinary," I replied.
"That's exactly what people say when they don't have a choice."
Her words stung more than I expected, not because I believed them but because I heard the certainty with which she delivered them. She seemed genuinely convinced that a person's value was measured by how many doors their name could open. Standing before her, I felt a flicker of anger, and beneath it, sadness. A life spent thinking that way must have been an exhausting life. Every room would be a competition. Every stranger would be either useful or disposable.
"I hope you're having a pleasant evening," I said, angling my body toward the skyline again.
Chloe moved into my line of sight. "Oh, don't be sensitive, sweetheart."
"I'm not being sensitive."
"Then why do you look so uncomfortable?"
I met her eyes. Until then I had tried to give her an opportunity to retreat with her dignity intact. I had answered without sarcasm, avoided the insults she kept offering me, and made it clear that I wanted only to be left alone. But now she was asking a direct question, and I saw no benefit in pretending that her behavior was harmless.
"Because you're trying very hard to embarrass me," I said, "and I don't understand why."
The effect was immediate. Her smile faltered, just for a second. I had not raised my voice, and that seemed to unsettle her more than an angry response would have. A few guests looked up. Someone stopped laughing in the middle of another conversation. The moment had become impossible to disguise as ordinary small talk.