He was referring to Princeton and Eastern Washington University. Some of the other professors tutted and scolded the Tapir and told Jack there was no need to answer the question, but he chuckled and waved off any offense and happily cited financial support and the strength of the program. He then pivoted to his love for the state of Washington and how he hoped to stay there, which allowed him to sneak in a reference to his wife, a detective with the Seattle PD, and their child. He wanted to keep close to home. He was interviewing with Stanford and Brown and Rice later that afternoon, but UW was honestly his top choice, because it was his backyard. Not only did he want to continue living there, but he wanted to continue researching there. The Pacific Northwest was his laboratory. He knew—legally—the committee couldn’t ask about a candidate’s personal life, but he also knew that offering up his family and his preferred zip code would help his chances, since single young academics were notorious for job-hopping, and if somebody left a department in this uncertain financial climate, there was no guarantee the position would remain.

The Tapir had tried to stab him but had inadvertently helped him. That didn’t stop Jack from replaying the moment over and over in the hours and the days and then the weeks that followed—all the way through his eventual campus interview and finally the job offer—remembering the small smile tugging the corner of the Tapir’s mouth.

And now, here in Kincaid Hall, the Tapir is once again twirling his Montblanc pen and judging from a distance as Jack speaks at the front of the room. “Did you know over one-quarter of the biomass on this planet originates from fungi? Two point two million species and counting.” He clicks through green and gray microscopic images on the screen and talks about how the fossils of terrestrial fungi date back some four hundred million years. “And guess what? Some believe their earliest form might reach back a billion and a half years. A billion and a half!” He throws up both arms as if to elicit a cheer from them. “Though that’s difficult to ascertain since fungi do not biomineralize. Oh, and get this—fungi may have been the dominant life on Earth until around two hundred fifty million years ago!”

Here he pauses for dramatic effect, and in the silence that follows, rain patters on the window and a student checks a text on her phone. The Tapir blinks at him a few times before scribbling another round of notes. He licks his finger and flips to a fresh sheet.