“Fitz,” he said, shaking his head, “you have to realize you’ve started something here, you’ve embarked, and you can’t just jump off the boat in the middle of the deep blue sea. Especially since you’re coming off a bad trip, and it doesn’t make the least particle of sense to leave it there. Saturday,” he said. “Seven. You with me?”

The wind chased a scrap of paper across the dead yellow lawn. Fitz hunched his shoulders and put a hand to his throat to pinch his collar shut. He’d wanted Tim’s attention and now he’d got it. Ken and Fanchon were living in the house on Homer Street, along with Hollingshead and Dick Alpert and maybe the new blonde—Peggy, her name was—and who knew who else? It was a club, an exclusive club, and he was a member. He was going to say, I’ll ask Joanie, when Tim forestalled him. “Jesus, I hate this weather,” he said. “You know what I find myself thinking about, all the time, day and night?”

“What?”

“Mexico, Fitz. You ever been to Mexico?”

The next morning there was a note from Tim in his departmental mailbox. Tim wanted to know if he’d stop by his office around four, if that was convenient, because he had a proposition for him—what the proposition involved was left unsaid. Throughout the day, though he was so busy with his classes and his own office hours he barely had time to think beyond the next sixty seconds, the mystery of that summons kept haunting him. Proposition? What did that mean? Did Tim want him to go out for drinks again, help him type up session reports, book tickets on the next liner to Veracruz? He couldn’t imagine. And what made it even more mystifying was that Tim had never dropped him a note before. Tim was his adviser, yes, but he’d been strictly hands-off to this point, and since Fitz was still at least a year away from coming up with a thesis topic there’d been no pressing need to confer—in fact he’d sought out Tim on his own initiative just to make the connection, and, of course, for the comfort of knowing Tim was there to provide guidance if the need should arise.

When he arrived he was surprised to see Walter Pahnke sitting there across the desk from Tim, his legs stretched out casually before him and crossed at the ankles. “Fitz,” Tim said, rising from his swivel chair, “you know Walter, of course? And, Walter, I think you know Fitz.”