There were two chairs in the room: Tim’s, behind the desk, and the one reserved for students in front of it. The blonde was sitting in the student chair and the Englishman was perched atop the two-tier filing cabinet, his long thin legs dangling above a pair of scuffed desert boots. They all looked at one another for a beat, then Ken, behind him in the hallway, said, “Tim, you need a bigger office,” and Tim, grinning wider, said, “Scotch. You drink scotch, Fitz?”

In the next moment everybody had a glass in hand and they were toasting to something—“The Project!”—and then Tim, the consummate host, was introducing him to the blonde, “In case you two didn’t meet the other night, or did you?” Tim shrugged his shoulders, the grin widening to show off a set of teeth that couldn’t have been whiter. “No matter. Brenda Maxxon, Fitzhugh Loney.”

He took her hand awkwardly. The moment burst over him: she was pretty in an incendiary way, with her hair teased out and a too-tight cardigan that emphasized her full breasts. “A pleasure,” she said, sipping her drink.

“And you know Michael, don’t you? No? Michael, Fitzhugh Loney. Fitz, Michael Hollingshead.”

Fanchon said something then and the group in the hall let out a laugh.

“What’s that?” Tim asked, tapping at his hearing aid. “Let’s all hear it, humor appreciated here, most appreciated, especially in this, what—dungeon?”

“I just said, I wish we could be reading Fitz’s report—and his wife’s. Aloud, I mean.” She paused, pursed her lips. “I will bet it is, what do you say, steamy, no?”

And Ken: “We couldn’t help noticing you discovered one of the side benefits of the research the other night—”

“The way you two were going at it,” Fanchon said, her voice rising high and birdlike till it twittered off the walls, “I thought maybe I ought to step in and formally introduce you to each other because I could have sworn you had just met or something—”

Everybody laughed now and if he reddened he couldn’t help that. It was just a moment and in that moment he saw that it was all in good fun, a little ribbing, his initiation into the inner circle, and he found himself laughing along with them, the scotch whiskey already rising from his stomach to his brain.

Tim swung his legs off the desk then and leaned in to scan the whole group, the pretty blonde, the Englishman with the high forehead and sunken cheeks, Ken, Fanchon, Charlie and himself. “Come on, Fanchon,” he said in a teasing lilt, “you know we’re all professionals here.”