Brian Taylor stooped slightly, but elegantly to enter the door draped with remnants of a celebration. Lights were still glittering, reflections flashing, and the hum of repeated choruses clammered behind a door on the opposite side of the immense ballroom. He walked slowly toward it. He saw his image in a mirrored door panel and turned stopped. Was that really him? Somehow he thought of himself being boyish in appearance. This old fellow looked for like his father. And the frown on his forhead was not what he planned to present to the world. He thought he had hidden the tiredness, the pain, the weary desperate longing from the eyes of his friends and especially from strangers. Brian opened the door. He smelled a certain staleness in the air. It reminded him of a shirt taken off after a party. The odor of various people's cologne mingled with sweat, spilt wine, old food and smoke. Yes, he thought, "Stale, yet pleasantly full of memories. At least it was better than being alone." He entered the dark room and was immediately confronted with the cooing and calling and muted braying of voices he recognized, yet could not match with a face. Swirls of golden bodies reached, pawed, pleaded, beckoned and touched him. Light from the open door spilled onto sequins that glittered from the floor where they had been discarded from costumed bodies that he was familiar with. All of them. He stared, searched shadows, then regarded the room as empty. For him. Empty. Because the scene lacked the one set of eyes that he desired. Brian closed the door and turned back to the exit, wondering how he had allowed himself to become a prisoner to these crowded empty rooms.