“In the room, the children come and go — talking of Bozo.”

He repeated it to himself, smiling despite his discomfort in the clown suit. There was something creepy about clowns — the Bozos, the Barnum and Bailey archetypes with their floppy shoes and red bulb noses. He preferred the clowns of Shakespeare: Feste, and Hamlet’s gravedigger; Macbeth’s porter, and Lear’s fool. They were serious clowns, clowns with a message; clowns with a purpose. Clowns whose universality was based on wit, not witlessness. And here he was, in floppy shoes and a bulb nose, being exactly what he hated.

He twisted another balloon into a giraffe and handed it to the little girl standing in front of him. He drew another balloon and began to fashion it into a sword for the next child, a boy of about seven. All the while his eyes scanned the room, taking in the children and, especially, their parents: which ones came together, which ones alone. Then he scanned the children again, to see whose parent didn’t come at all but merely dropped the child off.

He handed the last balloon animal — a dachshund — to the girl who had waited for it patiently, and told the kids he would be back after their cake and ice cream to show them some magic tricks. The children ran off.

A sultry woman approached him, carrying a glass.

“Wine?” he asked, a bit skeptically. “Is that normal at a four-year-old’s party?”

She smiled. “Well, it’s my home. My rules. I suppose I can do what I want.”

“Yes,” he smiled back, taking the wine and sipping it cautiously. “I suppose you can at that.” The wine was quite good, far better than he expected. He sipped again, a fuller taste, and closed his eyes briefly while the warmth spread across his palate and down his throat. When he opened his eyes again, she was watching him.

“What?” he said. “Oh, I’m sorry. I do so many of these, you know, but I’m never offered an adult beverage. It’s a rare moment, so worth savoring.” He smiled at her, and she smiled back. Something passed between them in that moment, the sort of thing that promised so much and signaled danger almost as clearly. “I should really get back to work,” he said. “I hear the lady of the house is quite,” he paused and pretended to think, “demanding.”

“Quite,” she answered. “Best not to let her catch you socializing.” She smiled, a smile that hinted broadly at seduction as much as it warned him never to cross her. “She can be quite generous, of course, but she has very high expectations.”

From the other room, four dozen voices — ranged in age from four to nearly four score years — sang out “Happy Birthday” and she said, simply, “Excuse me. I must see to the ice cream. So difficult to find good help, you know.” And that smile again, a parting shot. He returned the smile, set aside the wine glass, and began to diligently set up for the magic show.

In the powder room, while the children enjoyed their ice cream and cake, he wiped the clown white from his face, removed the wig and nose, and changed in to a dinner jacket and trousers to become as classic a magician as he had been a clown moments before. He studied his face in the mirror, trying to see past the lines: Whose face was this? Had its owner merely lived, or lived well?

His years-younger self stared back at him, and spoke inside his head. “When you have no expectations,” it said, “disappointment rests easier on your spirit.” True enough, he thought, except that at my age expectations are rather high regardless. And the trouble with no expectations is an absence of ambition and drive as well. He splashed water on his face and knotted his bow tie carefully, adjusting it in the mirror and giving himself a nod of approval. Most of his peers used clip-on ties, for expedience and out of frustration with trying to tie the thing. He had never understood their difficulty and didn’t care to help them: This, he felt, was one small way to set himself apart, dramatically pulling at it as he headed into his finale so that the silk slipped from his collar and he was left holding something resembling, in length at least, the prop for a rope trick.

He tugged the ends again and adjusted the knot straight, smiled approval at the mirror, and went back to his audience.