She glanced up at Fitz then—he was just across the lot, not thirty feet away, where they’d parked to leave room for the others, since he’d insisted on getting here first. He kept circling the car, peering under it, checking the trailer hitch and tightening and retightening the ropes he’d secured their things with. He was nervous, she could see that, nervous about the whole business. He’d arranged for a leave of absence, telling McClelland how much he regretted having come under Dr. Leary’s influence and pleading with him to understand that he was going to need time to reconfigure his dissertation—or, actually, jettison it altogether. In the interim, he told him, he was going to take a part-time job and really bear down on reviewing the latest literature in personality studies and come up with a dissertation proposal that would be acceptable to everybody in the department. And McClelland, relieved to be rid of Tim and Dick and any lingering influence they might still have, told him to take as long as he needed.

Now, seeing the expression on Fitz’s face—he looked as if he were expecting war, not peace—she said to Ken, with a laugh, “I think Fitz needs this, really needs it,” and after taking a furtive puff herself, crossed the lot to their car, took hold of her husband and pulled him to her for a smoky kiss. “Mm,” he murmured, “tastes good. But should we—I mean, I’ve got to drive, and it’s not as if New York’s just around the corner.”

“Here,” she said, after snatching a quick look over her shoulder—the nearest strangers all the way across the lot, Corey milling around with the Eggers kids and the Roberts twins, their heads down, doughnuts and cartons of milk in their hands—she passed him the marijuana cigarette. “Take this,” she said. “It’ll relax you.”

And he did take it, his eyes masked against the smoke and his hair glowing in the soft filtered light just then beginning to seep through the overcast. He leaned back against the car, crossed his ankles, and took a deep drag and then another and yet one more, before finally handing it back to her.