“Groovy stuff. I’d have gotten it all by now, except you can’t exactly take most of it out in your pockets. Uninterruptible power supplies, the four-hour ones; about three dozen heavy-duty storage batteries; some charge controllers; a whole pile of halogen floods — hey, they must be replacement bulbs for the outdoor lights. Take that look off your face. Just because the place isn’t lived in doesn’t mean it’s not guarded.”

I’d forgotten LeRoy, and was startled when he said, “Y’know, if we’re not going to find the books, we might as well have dinner.”

Sher said, “LeRoy, it’s your house, but don’t you think we oughta put this back in the boxes, at least?” She flourished the postcards. “Hey, can I hang on to these?”

I stood up and worked my way around the pile to the closet again. The books I’d tried to get at on the shelf were still there. I pulled them down. Modern English Grammar, 7th Ed. Windows on Western History. And, binding and page edges irregularly tan, Adventures in Physical Science. I stared at them, and at the pile of paper on the floor, and the postcards in Sher’s hand.

“If you want to send a message,” I said softly, frowning again at the books, “try Western Union.” But no telegrams were forthcoming.

I wound up delivering the textbooks to Paulo and coming back to LeRoy’s for dinner. Theo and Frances had been right about the corn fritters. Conversation was easy around the table during the meal; but as we finished, Frances leaned toward me and said in a low voice, “I think I’d like to get embarrassingly drunk, in good company. Would you mind? And Theo and Sher, too, if they can stand it?”

Sher contributed a bottle of Iron Range malt whiskey. We climbed to the warm, barely sloping roof of one of the hay sheds and sprawled there, drinking from the bottle and watching the emerging stars and talking, erratically, about nothing particular. The whiskey was smoky and full on the tongue, and the roof slope faced south, away from the City.

The bottle had gone around a few times when I dropped my gaze from the sky to the roof. Sher, Frances, and Theo were picked out in monochrome by starlight and a half moon, the uneven rickrack lines of heads, shoulders, and knees dusted silver. The moody voice of a clarinet rose behind us, from somewhere in town, asking rhythm-and-blues questions that didn’t need an answer.

Frances held the bottle on her chest and said thoughtfully:

“Now all the truth is out,

Be secret and take defeat

From any brazen throat,

For how can you compete,

Being honor bred, with one

Who, were it proved he lies,

Were neither shamed in his own

Nor in his neighbors’ eyes?”

I said, “Who—”

“W. B. Yeats,” Frances sighed. “There’s nothing like the Irish for times like this.”

“Bottle,” said Theo, and Frances passed it.

I looked at them, and thought it was no wonder that I hadn’t subscribed to the concept of friendship. The silliest exercise I could imagine would be to squeeze these three profoundly dissimilar people under the umbrella of the single word “friend.”