Behind him, down the length of the veranda, two of Maynard’s bandmates were pushing through the front door with their instrument cases and overnight bags, already on to their next gig, and if they were concerned with the finer points of the experiment under way here, they didn’t show it. In fact, one of them—the tenor sax man, flattop, sideburns—set down his bags and lit up a joint, took a drag and passed it to his companion, who in turn set his own bags down to take it in two fingers and put it to his lips. “Shit, they got a lot of trees out here,” the first one said. “I hear you,” the other said, squinting against the light before reaching into his breast pocket and digging out his sunglasses. Fitz watched them till they picked up their bags, descended the steps and started up the drive to the car waiting there for them.

“Agreed,” he said, setting aside the screwdriver in favor of an adjustable wrench, which seemed more adequate to the task, “but I wish it would progress.”

“If you’re talking about your thesis, don’t go there, Jesus, not today—”

“My fecis, you mean.”

“Right,” Ken said, laughing. “Mine’s made of shit too.”

“But what I mean is it’s coming up on a year now, ten months anyway, and I’m no closer to any sort of revelation—or breakthrough, maybe breakthrough’s a better word—than I was on the beach in Zihuatanejo. And some of us—I mean, Paulette—are starting to scare me.”

“You were pretty scary yourself last night.”

“Point taken, but then that’s what I’m saying: Where is this going? Is there any end in sight? Can we even call ourselves scientists anymore—or what are we, mystics? Partygoers? Bacchanalians?”

Ken raised the can to his lips and Fitz saw that he looked enervated, old, as if he’d aged a decade in a single night, the golden boy no longer—and not an adept either, just a weary explorer who’d all but given up on his degree to follow Tim, to be here, doing this. Like him. Just like him. “Come on, Fitz,” he said, “I’ve got a headache—or no, you’re giving me a headache. We’re here, in the moment, okay? Isn’t that enough?”

“Truthfully, no. Maybe Dick’s on the path to enlightenment, maybe Tim is, but me? I’m just”—and here he had to pause a moment to let his emotions catch up—“lost. More and more, that’s what I’m feeling, lost.”