Yes, he understood and he understood too how persuasive Tim could be, but his instinct was to say no. Walter had said it himself—it wasn’t his thesis, so what was in it for him? Why should he care even? But then Tim was the one who’d put him forward, and if Tim was on board with this, maybe he’d better be too.

“So, Fitz”—Walter drew up his legs and leaned into the desk—“what do you think?”

“I don’t know—when is it? In case I have a conflict or anything—”

“Next month, April twentieth, Easter break.” Walter was watching him carefully now, as if the point was won and any further objection all but useless. “It’s Good Friday, actually.”

Joanie didn’t like the idea. She thought Tim was manipulating him, using him, and didn’t he have enough obligations as it was? Wasn’t he always complaining about how overworked he was? And what about her? What about Corey?

“But it’ll only be that one morning—and afternoon. And all I have to do is be there, really, in case anybody, I don’t know, has a bad reaction or something.”

They were in the kitchen, moving around each other, sharing a quart of Budweiser and working cooperatively to put together the evening meal, which was going to be spaghetti and meatballs, with a side salad. Joanie was molding meatballs in her cupped palms and dropping them one by one into the pan on the front burner; he was dicing carrots and onions and deconstructing a head of lettuce. In the living room behind them, Corey was sunk into the couch, doing his homework and watching a western with the sound turned low.

“Like you, you mean? Like the other night?”

He looked up, then away again, focusing on the knife, the vegetables, the cutting board. “Yeah,” he said, “I guess so. But I won’t be taking the drug, or not necessarily—”

She turned to him now, poised over the pan, the meat sizzling, the windows steamed over. From the other room came the muted sounds of gunfire and galloping horses. “What do you mean, what are you talking about?”

“The chances are fifty-fifty, because half of us, of the ten guides and the twenty students, that is, will be getting the placebo, which is nicotinic acid—and by the way, I heard both Ken and Charlie have already signed on, because this could wind up being an important study, I mean, groundbreaking, and everybody wants to be in on it.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me. You mean the guides take it too?”

“Well, yeah, you know how Tim feels about cutting through the doctor/patient game—”

“Tim,” she said. “It’s all about Tim, isn’t it?”

“No, it’s about science. About psychology, clinical psychology—you know, like the whole idea of what we’re doing here in Cambridge?”