“That would be wonderful,” he said. “I’d love it.”

He walked with her to the front door. He didn’t ask where she parked her car or if someone was coming to pick her up, someone whom she’d called while he’d been preparing the coffee. As he opened the door, however, he said, “I’m so glad you found the spare key—but how did you know where to look for it?”

Cocking her head like a beautiful bird regarding a curiosity, she said, “You don’t really remember?”

“I’m baffled.”

She cited one of his novels: “The Last Flight Out.”

She had so unsettled—and so satiated—him that his mind was flaccid, empty, and he could not access any memory of his book, as if it had been written by someone else, a tale he’d read a long time ago and little recalled.

“The lead character, Elijah,” she reminded him, “keeps a spare key under one of two rocking chairs on his back porch. Rocking chairs exactly like the two on your porch.”

Although the key had no thematic or plot purpose, though it was a small detail of no consequence, the memory of his book coalesced around it as if it were of great meaning akin to that of the green light, in Fitzgerald’s classic novel, that Jay Gatsby saw from across the bay, at the end of Daisy Buchanan’s dock, a light symbolizing the orgastic future forever beyond his grasp.

If Maddison had committed to memory even such minor moments of David’s work, perhaps she might be one of those obsessive fans whose admiration could compromise their reason, drawing him into dark and dangerous territory. But he didn’t find it credible that a woman with all her qualities would have a psychological need to obsess about anyone or anything. All the world was an orchard for her to harvest as she chose; she was more likely to be the object of obsession.

“The Last Flight Out,” he said. “I forgot I gave Elijah my own back-porch rocking chairs.”

“I know it was bold of me,” she said. “But last evening, after our time in Laguna but before I came here . . . the business I had to take care of was so terrible, depressing, this awful man of such wicked character. There was no way to sleep, and only one antidote to all that. You. And it was right, wasn’t it, Davey, so good and so right?”

“Yes,” he agreed for many reasons, including because it was true that in spite of all the strangeness of their relationship, Maddison seemed to be healing him. “Yes, it was lovely and real and very right. Listen, I don’t have your phone number.”

“But you do, sweetie. After I showered, I texted it to you. You’ll find it on your phone.”

She kissed him lightly, quickly, and opened the door and said, “Six o’clock.”

He said, “I might be a little late. Let yourself in and make yourself at home.”