“Technically, North Scottsdale,” she says. “It’s not much farther.”

They curve up to the compound entrance, the sandstone sign lit from below. Above, Frank Lloyd Wright’s low-slung buildings are dark shapes against a craggy backdrop of mountains. Tami knows a service road, five hundred feet past the main entrance, with a gate they rarely lock.

They take the long way around the compound, rutted roads carved into the mountainside. The moon casts everything in strange greens and browns, purples in places you wouldn’t expect. Once, this whole landscape was filled with tents and lean-tos, Frank’s disciples camping in the desert, hoping to gain, by proximity, some expertise from the great master. Hundreds came during the Depression, paying for the opportunity to quarry stones and put them in place, the already-old man directing them with the tip of his cane. The steady flow continued for decades, long after Wright’s passing, first his widow and then his apprentices directing studies. But as the rest of architecture came to believe in technology, to prefer homes not with canvas louvers but with windows that shut, the stream of students slowed to a trickle. Now, only a handful come each year. Tami’s heard a few stalwarts still camp far up the hill, in those last places from which you can’t see the power lines and the perpetual glow of the city. Those holdouts won’t bother them tonight.

She parks the car next to a stand of acacias. Jason comes around and opens her door with a wobbly bow, and she thanks him. The electricity has returned, zapping between them, and she runs a finger across his abs. “Follow me.”

The pavilion, the cluster of cabins, the theater and studio and Frank’s residence are dark shapes blocking the sparkle of Scottsdale and Phoenix beyond. “On our left is Wright’s studio,” she starts, waving at the building with her best Vanna White. “Construction began in 1937. He designed the Guggenheim in there.” Jason walks up to the casement windows and peers into the room lit by a lone desk lamp. He must still be drunk, but in his admiration he’s turned a reverent that seems nearly sober. “Notice how that whole wall up there, the ceiling, is just treated canvas. Makes for great diffuse natural light when the morning sun hits it. Less great in the weather. Water … resistant.” They start toward the next building, another angular shadow coming up like the crag of a mountain. Idiosyncratic modern, that’s what the tour ladies call it.

Her finger points to a low rock along the path, a red square inscribed into its face. “Notice the red tile. That’s his signature.” Jason squats to see it better: a big F, two L’s, a W that melts into something diagonal. This tile is a replica, the difference between it and the original discernable only to connoisseurs, but she doesn’t mention it.