He looked back down at the dogs. They had resumed their positions on either side of his chair, Jill sitting barely at rest and shifting her weight from one front paw to the other, Jack staring at him in rigid and unblinking expectation, his snout tilted upward.

"It's a vicious circle," he said.

"Or maybe just you being a pushover for any creature in need." She picked up her muffin and nodded her chin at his plate. "You ought to have some of that food yourself."

He turned toward his dish and ate without enthusiasm, still unable to muster an appetite. On the stereo, Waller had launched into "Cash for Your Trash," his left hand swinging between octaves to lay down rhythmic bass and chord patterns, his right hand running up the scale with a bright introductory melody line.

Gordian found himself listening to the opening vocals.

"Haven't heard this one for ages," Ashley said, waiting until midway through the song to comment.

He nodded, took a bite of his eggs.

"I believe," she said, "that no other performer has ever been quite so up about being down. If you catch my meaning."

Gordian turned and looked at her.

"I do," he said. "When you consider that he was a black man in a time of obscene racial inequality, then take into account everything his generation lived through... the first World War, the Depression, World War II. If memory serves, he made his final recordings just as we were about to send our boys to Europe."

"Stormy weather," she said.

He nodded.

"His music's all about surviving bad times with a kind of resolute good humor," she said. "About having confidence that just being here, and alive, gives us the chance to see better times ahead ... trite as that may sound."

He nodded again.

"Yes," he said.

"To the trite part, or the other?"

"Both," he said. "But mostly the other."

They ate quietly and listened to the personnel on the various recordings--Benny Carter, Slam Stewart, Bunny Berigan, and others, in addition to Waller himself--roll through driving versions of "Lulu's Back in Town" and "I Ain't Got Nobody" and "Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter."

Ashley watched him awhile, then gestured toward the phone on the table.

"So," she asked. "Care to tell me what's going on?"

"I'm expecting to hear from Dorset at NASA," Gordian said. "We've been working to get the Orion inquiry up and running. I've given a lot of attention to its procedural mechanisms, but Alex Nordstrum talked to me yesterday about another aspect of the probe that ought not be neglected."

"Alex?" Her eyebrows rose with surprise. "I thought he was busy stroking off on the fairway."

Gordian gave her a thin smile.

"I think you mean teeing off," he said. "Anyway, I asked him to come to the office as a favor and he did." He shrugged. "You know."

She looked at him.