It was February, then it was March, and if he’d stayed away from Tim’s sessions it was only because he was trying to exert a little discipline in his life, even if it meant tarnishing his status as one of the shiny new spokes of the inner circle’s wheel. Which is not to say he didn’t drop in on Tim’s office hours every so often or take lunch with Ken and Charlie or some of the others, but still he kept his distance from Tim’s house on Homer Street, which existed for him as a kind of seraglio of the mind, a temptation, and if he found himself nodding off over a case study and blinking his way into vivid fantasies of Brenda Maxxon and Fanchon with their clothes off and their focal points glistening, that was just harmless wish fulfillment. And safe. Safe all the way round. Better to be bored than distracted.

Then one afternoon he was coming down the steps of the library and there was Tim, head down, chugging up the stairs as if in a hurry, his overcoat flapping open and his scarf knotted awkwardly round his throat. “Tim!” he called, “hi,” but Tim just gave him a quizzical look as if he didn’t recognize him, which was odd and disconcerting and hit him right where his confidence lived. Tim was a blur. He was up at the top of the steps now, already reaching for the library door, and Fitz couldn’t stop himself from calling out again, louder now, calling “Tim!” in a voice that nearly broke on the wind rushing in off the river. A pair of undergraduates gave him a look and Tim paused at the door to cast a glance back down the steps at him, the wire of the hearing aid as vivid as a groove cut into his cheek. “What?” he said in a shout that drew all the white condensed breath out of him. He looked irritated. Impatient. Looked as if his customary bonhomie had deserted him.

“It’s me, Fitz,” he heard himself call out. “I just wanted to say, to say . . . hi.”

The undergraduates moved past him, their shoulders rollicking in the grip of their peacoats. The sky was the color of gravel. The wind dug at him. It was an early March day on the steps of Widener and Tim was all the way up at the top, looking down at him and frowning—was he frowning?

“All right, then,” Tim said, producing a halfhearted wave with one hand while pulling open the door with the other. “Hi,” he called, then the door swung shut and he was gone.