“The American citizen,” he tells her, “is down, but not out. Can I?” He lifts her drink and takes the bar napkin from beneath it. Then he tilts back on two legs of his chair, which has the effect of drawing his crotch out from beneath the table and raising it slightly, featuring it, like an object ready to be unveiled. And, indeed, it is ready; his jeans are baggy, and his enthusiasm is nearly eclipsing his belt buckle. So positioned, he digs a pen from one of his front pockets. Then he lowers himself again, uncaps the pen, and unfolds the napkin. “I can’t go everywhere and see everything. I mean, I could, but it would take my whole life; I’d never get the book written. So here’s how I’m doing it.” The napkin is damp with condensation from her glass. The pen is a felt-tip. As he draws, his lines turn into caterpillars.

“Georgetown,” he says, making a dot that immediately becomes a blob, “was my starting point. I was a poli-sci major, but I dropped out right before Christmas. Going to classes was like going through a whole chain of restaurants where they pre-chewed your food and were just waiting to shove it in your mouth. Hello? No. So I went south, did Amtrak for a while, and a Greyhound for six hours, which was totally Jon Voight because this lady wouldn’t let me turn off the reading light and kept complaining about my headphones. I did some walking, some hitchhiking, and voilà, YOU ARE HERE.” He draws an arrow at his approximation of the northeast coast of Florida. “And I’m going to keep moving: down to the Keys, back up the gulf side, across the bottom of Texas and up the California coast. Then I’m heading straight across the top all the way to Maine, and back down to D.C. Assuming Dad hasn’t cut me off by that point, I’m going to cross the middle of the country—in a car, if I can find one of those great old convertibles—then backtrack to the middle, head up to the Canadian border, and straight down to the Rio Grande. That way, I’ve done the perimeter and a cross-section, which should be a pretty good representation of who’s out there.”

“Hold that up,” Mr. Jessup says from the sofa.

Todd lifts the now ink-sodden napkin and twists around in his chair to display it.

“I feel like I’m at a pattern party,” Mr. Jessup declares. “Honestly, son, besides sounding dreadful, that voyage would use a whole lot of gas.”

“It only sounds dreadful because ninety-nine out of a hundred people would be too terrified to do it.”

“Actually, it’s a dreadful idea because ninety-nine out of a hundred people are uncivilized—and dull—and you’d have to see them, and talk to them, town after town.”