It was like Mackenzie said: everyone had a little rationalizer in their head, a gob of neural machinery devoted to getting them off the hook. Their very own blame-thrower. If Nora found herself attracted to Neil, well then, it simply had to mean something was wrong with their marriage: after-all, happily married women never strayed. And if their marriage wasn't happy, then it had to be Thomas's fault, because the Lord knows how hard she tried to make it work.

Another man's cock… Now that was a revelation.

'How are you doing, professor?' Sam asked once they made the Jersey Turnpike. 'You're awfully quiet over there.'

'Neil,' he said, knowing it would be enough.

It was strange the way names could become explanations.

Thomas reflected how odd it was, the way the hooks of sexual attraction had carried him so far only to drop him like a rock when she had made her lack of interest clear. Everything seemed fogged with irrelevance.

They drove in silence for quite some time. At first it was the kitchen-table quiet after a night of bad dreams—a kind of willful silence. Sam sorted through several satellite radio stations, but gave up after sampling a half-dozen different genres, everything from bluegrass to death metal. Nothing, it seemed, could trump the whisking roar of the highway. The sound of nature. It wasn't until the sun bellied in the west, drawing eighty-mile-an-hour shadows across the lanes, that the funk, or whatever it was Mackenzie had tainted them with, finally lifted.

Gazing forward, Sam slowly reached between their seats. 'Would you like some Freeeeeeetos?' she cooed, once again dangling the shiny little bag between them. She glanced at him, her eyes round with mock wonder.

Thomas sputtered with laughter. 'You're a nut-bar, you know that?'

'Is that your professional opinion?'

And just like that, everything was back to normal. They rehearsed the Argument a la Neil once more, trying to graph his possible motivations in the ether of conversation. But they only managed to paraphrase their conclusions from yesterday: Gyges had something to do with recognition, Powski had something to do with pleasure and/or desire, and Halasz had something to do with free will. Neil was stripping away the illusions, trying to reveal the meat puppet within.

'What about your book?' Sam eventually asked.

'My book?'

'Yeah, you know, Through the Brain Darkly.'

'You been researching me, agent?'

She cocked her head like a teenager. 'Uh, like, it's my job you know.'