And now the son came into the picture, a child of five or six who wore a version of his father’s face and looked as if he’d just been thrust into a lifeboat as the ship went down. He seemed to be crying too, caught up in the emotional storm of whatever he imagined was going on here, and Fitz had a fleeting vision of the room at the top of the stairs where he’d gone so deep with Joanie that first night—hadn’t there been children’s posters on the walls? A teddy bear on the shelf? Dick and Jane?

The professor had come right up to him now. “Don’t you try to pass that off on me!” he shouted. “Don’t you dare!” And with a sudden jerk he slapped the key from Fitz’s hand so that it went clattering across the floor, the only sound in that vast reverberating echo chamber of a house.

For a long moment, nobody said anything. The professor glared, the wife suppressed a sob, the child bowed his head as if he were the one being chastised, and they all looked to the key, where it had come to rest against the grill of the refrigerator. If Fitz was anything, he was dutiful. He paid his debts, got his work in on time, stood as a comfort and support for his wife and son and gave loyalty where loyalty was due. But this was too much—he didn’t have to take this. He stripped off the other glove, dropped the sponge in the bucket atop the stove, turned his back on the professor and strode out of the room.

But the professor wasn’t done, not yet. He caught up to Fitz as he was heading for the front door, his voice gone high in his throat, shouting, “The walls, what is this on the walls?”

Fitz swung round on him, calculating—he’d had enough, but the professor outweighed him and had the force of moral certainty on his side. Still, for all that, Fitz had been pushed to the limit. He was ready to take a punch for Tim, to give as good as he got come what may—expulsion, a broken jaw, a lawsuit—but in the end he just answered the question. “Mandalas,” he said.

“Mandalas?” The professor’s eyes jumped behind his glasses. His face twitched. His mouth hung open on a set of graying Soviet-patched teeth.

“Drug parties,” the wife’s voice keened in the background. “They had drug parties here, Marty, just like the Wheelers said—”

“Mandalas?” the professor repeated. “What in hell are mandalas?”

“India,” he said. “Tibet. Look it up in the encyclopedia.”