Ocean Voice had said he was making an argument, as well as 'making' love. But what argument? Was it the Argument?

Was it Neil holding the camera? Was he the shadow behind the occluded frame?

The Argument, as they would come to call it, was something from their undergraduate days at Princeton. Both he and Neil had been scholarship students, which meant they had no money for anything. Where their more affluent friends bar-hopped or jetted home for the holidays, they would buy a few bottles of Old English Malt Liquor, or 'Chateau Ghetto' as Neil used to call it, and get fucked up in their room.

Everyone debated things in college. It was a reflex of sorts, an attempt to recover the certainty of childhood indoctrination for some, a kind of experimental drug for others. Neil and Thomas had definitely belonged to the latter group. Questions—that was how humans made ignorance visible, and the two of them would spend hours asking question after question. Grounds became flimsy stage props. Assumptions became religious chicanery.

For a time it seemed that nothing survived. Nothing save the Argument.

Like most, Thomas had moved on. Humans were hardwired for conviction, thoughtless or otherwise, and had to work to suspend judgment—work hard. He had taken the low road, allowing the assumptions to crowd out the suspicions. The years passed, the children grew, and he found himself packing all the old questions away, even as he continued playing Professor Bible, destroyer of worlds in the classroom. Nothing killed old revelations quite so effectively as responsibility and routine.

But Neil… For whatever reason, Neil had never let go. Thomas humored his ramblings, of course, the way you might humor old high school football stories, or any reminiscence of irrelevant glory. 'Oh, yeah, you sacked him real good.' He even wondered whether it was a sign of some hidden distance between them, an inability to connect outside of on-campus residences and off-campus bars.

Last night had simply been more of the same, hadn't it?

He was trying to talk me out of loving my kids.

Peekskill glared beyond the windshield, whipping this way and that as Thomas gunned the straightaways and squealed around the turns. He peered like a pensioner over the steering wheel when he turned down Nora's crescent. The sight of her black Cherokee in the driveway made him numb.

So much for her trip.

His heart sucked ice-cubes in his chest.

'San Francisco my ass,' he muttered.

Special Agent Samantha Logan put her white Mustang into park and let it idle. She flicked her cigarette outside, watched Thomas Bible through the windshield. He trotted up to the front door of a grey-brick bungalow. He looked agitated.

Somehow she'd known he was heading home. She'd followed him from Columbia to the West 116th subway station, then raced north to beat him to Peekskill—halfway to fucking Poughkeepsie! Somehow she'd known there was more to Thomas Bible than met the eye.