He found out a few minutes later, when Ben parked his car in the Breakwater parking lot and walked with him down Cannery Row. They stopped in front of the plywood wall that still covered the front of the old Pacific Biological Laboratories. Ben looked up and down the street, then pulled aside a portion of the wall.

“Go on,” he said, motioning for Hudson to slip through.

He followed a moment later, making sure the wall was once more secured. They were standing in front of a small building, its walls covered with once-dark wood boards worn almost silver with age. A short flight of stairs led to a door. Ben went up them, dragging Hudson by the hand behind him.

Hudson stepped into a small room. “How did you get in here?” he asked Ben.

“Al came through,” Ben said. “I thought you still might want to see it.”

Hudson was walking around the room, touching the books and ledgers, the typewriter on the desk, the glass jars filled with specimens of starfish and octopus swimming in the cloudy brownish-yellow baths of formaldehyde. “Was this all his?” he asked, looking with awe at the phonograph sitting on a small table. A record—Duke Ellington’s Black, Brown and Beige—rested on the turntable, and several dozen more were stacked on the shelf beneath.

“Most of it,” said Ben. “I think they’ve replaced some things over the years. But this is basically what it looked like when he lived here.”

Hudson turned around. “I feel like we’re trespassing,” he said. “Like he just ran out to get some more beer at Wing Chong’s and will be back any second.”

Ben sat in one of the two armchairs in the room. Hudson remained standing, examining the rest of the room. In one corner there was a cot covered in a red and black, plaid wool blanket. One corner of it was turned back, and there was a dent in the center of the lone pillow, as if its owner had just recently risen. Hudson touched it, expecting to feel heat but feeling only cool cotton.

“This is where it all happened,” Ben said. “The parties, the all-night conversations, everything.”

Hudson took a seat in the other chair. The seat gave beneath him, and he wondered who else might have sat there before him. Joseph Campbell, maybe, come to talk to Ricketts about the White Goddess and the archetype of the Everyman. Steinbeck, of course. Maybe Sparky Enea, first mate and cook from the famous Sea of Cortez journey aboard the Western Flyer. Any of them—and many more—could have, almost certainly had, visited Ricketts.

The light was fading, but Ben had turned on a small lamp. Its glow filled the room, spilling across the floor like honey, warm and intimate. Hudson and Ben, contained within its reach, sat silently for a long time, until Hudson said, “What are you thinking?”