'I have two,' Thomas said, raising the same number of thick-feeling fingers. 'Frankie and Ripley.'

Neil shook his head and smiled. Now it was his turn to feign interest in the images tumbling across the TV. He cradled his beer between steepled fingers. For the first time, Thomas saw past his own irritation and disbelief, and realized just how much stress his best friend must be suffering.

The NSA… unbelievable.

On the screen, images of armed men shooting into the sky floated beneath a GE corporate banner: Islamic fighters in some breakaway Chinese province.

'Theo-terrorists,' Neil said.

'I think,' Thomas replied, 'the technical term would be "insurgents."'

'Whatever. You know how we dealt with them in the Neuromanipulation Division?'

Marilyn tittered at the edge of the pool on his T-shirt.

'How?'

'Love,' Neil said. 'We made them love us.'

Thomas had stared blankly at the screen.

'As easy as flicking a switch.'

This had been the pattern, since their first days rooming together at Princeton. Neil with his questions. Neil with his demands. Neil with his mocking replies, his outrageous claims. All of it hedged with just-fucking-with-you glances and a what's-your-problem tone. Just as no two people are exactly equal in terms of capacities, no friendships are perfectly mutual. Neil had always been quicker, better looking, more articulate—inequities that had always expressed themselves through the complicated weave of their relationship.

And Thomas had always been more forgiving.

'But hey,' Neil drawled after a moment, 'I came here to celebrate, not to break your balls.'

Thomas shot him a humorless look. Black-and-white Marilyn seemed to be drowning across his chest, but it was just a trick of the angle. 'I was beginning to think the two were indistinguishable.'

'I'm sorry, man. Just a mood, you know. Here.' He splashed two more shots of whiskey, then raised his in a toast. After a reluctant heartbeat, Thomas raised his in turn. He could feel himself sway ever so slightly.

'I've escaped,' Neil said. There was something embarrassingly direct about his blue-eyed gaze. 'I've completely escaped.'

Thomas had been too afraid to ask which…

The NSA or Disney World?

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER THREE

August 17th, 11.15 a.m.

Plagued by a curious breathlessness, Thomas crowded off the MTA North with a dozen or so others, most of them chatty octogenarians. He'd lost count of how many times he'd shaken his head and pinched his eyes, but images of Cynthia Powski, her desire turned inside out, returned with every blink. Again and again, like an adolescent dream. He didn't begin shaking until he started crossing the hot-plate asphalt of the parking lot.

Sunlight glared across a thousand windshields.

Everything had pockets, hidden depths that could be plumbed but never quite emptied. A look, a friend, a skyscraper—it really didn't matter. Everything was more complicated than it seemed. Only ignorance and stupidity convinced people otherwise.