She came into the room one morning—by his count it was the fourth day he’d been back—and without a word began gathering up socks, underwear, T-shirts and towels and stuffing them into the laundry bag while he sat there at his desk, puzzling over half a dozen sheets of graphs he’d drawn up in his previous life and wondering what he was going to do with them. He’d long since given up any notion of making his mark in the field—his thesis wasn’t going to be revolutionary like Tim’s, just workmanlike, a compilation and comparison of Skinnerian lab studies that was as yet searching for a conclusion or even an overriding idea. He just wanted to get through with it, that was all, wanted his degree, though it seemed to matter less and less as the days went on and the interpersonal became all there was.

She was making an inordinate amount of noise for somebody simply stuffing clothes into a bag, but he didn’t turn around, didn’t want to be distracted, though he was already distracted, had been distracted before she even came into the room. He heard her rummaging around Corey’s room and a moment later she came back through the doorway with a second bag, flung it down beside the first and began stripping the bed—their bed—and balling up the dirty sheets in one of the pillowcases.

After a moment of this—she was exaggerating her breathing, sighing, grunting—she said, “I can’t believe you,” and now he did turn around.

“What do you mean?”

She was wearing sweatpants, moccasins and a tan cable-knit sweater three sizes too big for her, a man’s sweater, and it wasn’t one of his. “I mean, I haven’t slept here the last two nights and you don’t say anything about it? Jesus, did you even notice?”

“Of course I noticed.”

“So why didn’t you say anything?”

“I don’t know, I thought you were”—a phrase of Charlie’s popped into his head—“doing your own thing.”

“I was. I am.” Her hands jumped, the pillowcase swelled. “I’ve been sleeping with Ken. And Fanchon. The three of us. Just for a little”—and here her voice broke—“affection. Affection, Fitz, you know what that is?”

“Sure,” he said, “of course I do,” but he didn’t get up from the desk.

“I’m in love with him.”