Or trying to. At the moment he was stalled on the fringes of the room, clutching Joanie’s hand like a child on a school trip. People chattered, the fire snapped. He had an impulse to back away, tug Joanie out the door, down the steps and into the car and just forget the whole thing, and he’d actually taken a step backward when Joanie’s grip tightened round his fingers and she hissed, “Fitz, what are you doing?” It was the moment of truth and it seemed to break the spell. Suddenly everything came into focus—he knew these people, or some of them, and this was where he belonged, this was what he’d come for. It was now or never.

The better part of the inner circle was gathered round the fireplace, as well as a couple of people he didn’t recognize, including a blonde with an angelic face and a cheerleader’s figure who turned out to be Tim’s girlfriend (or, actually, his date for the night, since they’d just met the day before). The room itself, high ceilinged, wainscoted walls, period furniture, was casually elegant, presumably reflecting the taste of the owner, a prof on sabbatical who’d rented the place to Tim for the year, or at least that was what he’d heard. A prof in the History Department, he thought it was—or no, International Law.

The bass thumped, the saxophone soared, and before he could think he was pulling Joanie across the room to where Ken Sensabaugh was standing with his back to him, waving a cocktail glass at two girls Fitz had never seen before and one he had—Ken’s wife, wasn’t it?—and then he was tapping Ken on the shoulder and Ken was swinging round on him and breaking into a grin. “Fitz, my man, you finally made it!”

Ken was a head taller than anybody in the room, which made him stand out, which, he realized, was why he’d gone to him first. But that was all right, because Ken had been the first to befriend him when he entered the program, and though they weren’t exactly close, or not yet, he radiated a kind of energy and high spirits that were hard to resist, almost as if he were Tim’s doppelgänger. Careful not to spill his drink—a martini he held pinched by the stem between two fingers—Ken bent forward to take Joanie’s hand and bring it to his lips, as if they were all in some Noel Coward play, crooning, “And this must be Joanie I’ve heard so much about, Joanie Loney, Joanie, Joanie, Joanie Loney.”

“The one and only!” Joanie said, grinning back at him. “And you’re Ken, right? One of Fitz’s classmates?”