“Well, hey,” he said suddenly, slipping down off the fence. “We’re young, we’re strong, and we know how to wire a quarter-inch phone plug. Something’ll come along.”

“Any minute,” I said. I looked up at the sky, held out my hands, and added loudly, “Preferably in Hi-8 format, with a copy of Casablanca loaded.” I turned back to him. He was smiling, a little. “You’ve got grease all over your nose, from pushing your glasses up.”

Theo was staying in LeRoy’s house across the circle from Josh’s, a two-and-a-half-story log building so new it still had the heated smell of cut wood. When we reached it, Theo led the way around to the back porch. There was a pump beside the steps, and a big jar of soft soap on the porch railing. Theo pulled his shirt over his head, which, I found, made me uncomfortable. I sat on the top step and pretended to be absorbed in brushing dirt off my jungle boots.

“Pitch me the soap?” he said. I had to look at him after all. He’d been going without his shirt intermittently, it seemed; he was lightly browned, and freckled across the shoulders. It still made me uncomfortable, I decided. I threw him the soap jar, and he traded me his glasses for it. He cranked up the pump, stuck his head under the water, and let out a reverberating, gurgling shriek.

“I think,” said Frances, strolling around the corner of the house, “the water’s cold.”

“You wonder why he’d do a thing like that,” I said.

“No, you don’t. If he’s in the same condition you are, there’s no mystery at all. What were you doing, building an oil tanker?”

“He was worse, actually. We were wrestling a Honda generator.”

“It won?”

“Probably a moral victory. But it runs now.”

She sat on the step below mine. “So,” she said, watching Theo douse his head again, “what are we going to do next?”

I stared at her, keeping my mouth closed with an effort. Then I wrapped my arms around my knees. “I’ve had this conversation twice already in the last twenty-four hours. You people ought to coordinate better.”

“Did they mean the same thing I do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then how do you know you’ve had this conversation? I mean,” she added, before I had time to object, “that I want to know how you think my future ought to influence yours, and vice versa. I like it here, but eventually, being in striking distance of the City would rot my mind. I’d have to take another shot at him, and there’s no point. As you pointed out, shortening the running time on my life story would be ungrateful. So I’ll leave, sooner or later, and sooner is probably not a bad idea.

“Given all that, are you staying, or going?” She pulled her own knees up to her chest and looked at me.

“If I go, do I have to go with you?”

“Christ, no, but you’re welcome to. This is my Byzantine way of telling you so.”