They parked at the terminal and walked to the gate. Pat checked his bags, and Dan scanned the monitors for the flight. It was on time. Boarding began, and Pat kissed them both on their foreheads and then he hobbled slowly down the jetway. He turned back to wave but couldn’t find them. He didn’t think they had gone, but like the empty-hearted ancients descending into the underworld, he had disappeared from them. The jetway, which had baked on the tarmac all day, was broiling hot. He made his way onto the plane. Pat was seated in first class, where it took him less than a second to notice the booze cart. Pat opened the tiny nozzle for air above his seat. The Eastern flight attendant came by.

“Anything to drink?”

“Ginger ale, please.”

The plane pulled back and taxied. It rumbled onto the runway, the engines screamed, and the plane cleared the ground. As they leveled off, the evening sun burnished the wing and all of Dallas came into Pat’s view. He looked down at the tract housing, the glass and steel towers, the golden ribbons of highway, the whole city there below him, glittering like Cibola, which, as we have learned, was nowhere in particular.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you first and foremost to my wife, Susan, whose love saved me.

And thanks to my son, Dan, who will be a sophomore next year. Enjoy it, buddy. I’m very proud of you.

Thank you to everyone at Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas. It was a very good time and place—better than I could ever describe it.

Thank you to my high school crew who read this book and gave it their blessing, including Rick Dowlearn, Rob McGhee, Steve O’Donnell, and Will Kelly. (B.J.’s scene got cut, but I promise to make it up to him.) Friends like you make the world spin slow.

Thank you also to my high school teachers David Oglesby and Robert Donahue. It’s an honor, sirs.

Thank you to Jake Morrissey, Gerry Howard, Kyle Reeves, and Richard Abate for reading early versions of the book.

Thank you to David Black and Bob Dylan, who both talked me through it.

Special shout-outs to Richard Hauben and Chris Sturiano at Weill Cornell Midtown Center for Treatment and Research.

Sally Kim made this book possible. You are a beautiful person and a true friend. Thank you.

And Gabriella Mongelli, truly an editor’s editor. You are gifted—Norwegian rat status hereby granted. I am so grateful for you.

Many thanks to the Putnam team: Ivan Held, Ashley McClay, Alexis Welby, Brennin Cummings, Nishtha Patel, Ashley Hewlett, Ellie Schaffer, Erica Rose, Aja Pollock, and Erika Verbeck.

And thanks finally to my first teacher, my mother, Anne Desmond, who died under suspicious circumstances when her carriage plunged into the Liffey on the tenth of August in the year of Our Lord, 1919.

Just kidding, Mom—I love you.

Miss you, Dad.