“We have a similar concept,” remarked Joffy.

“So where is your manuscript?” Miles asked the Wingco.

“I wish we knew.”

“It might be stuck in an attic somewhere,” I added, since we’d looked for it on several occasions, “or at the back of a desk drawer, fallen down behind a filing cabinet—who knows? All we’d need is ten minutes with a photocopier and the Wingco would merely be ‘Vulnerable.’ A limited print run of ten and he’d be on Vanity Island and ‘At Little Risk of Endangerment.’”

“What if you’re landfill?” asked Tuesday. “Anaerobic digestion could take years.”

“Would you make some coffee, please, Friday?” I said quickly, in order to change the subject. The Wingco had thought of that, too, and the landfill theory was good and bad news. Good in that he could last for a century or more with little ill effects and perfectly safe—but bad in that the inevitable breakdown of the manuscript would be painfully protracted as the story fell apart word for word. I’d seen it happen, and it wasn’t pretty.

“Back in 1996 I headed up Jurisfiction’s Manuscript Retrieval Squad,” I said. “I spent almost a year doing little but tracking down Critically Endangered manuscripts. Did I tell you about how I found what came to known as the ‘Hemingway Hoard’?”

“Many times,” said Tuesday, getting up to help Friday with the things.

I thought I wouldn’t bore anyone else, so we changed the subject to my mother and my Aunt Polly, who seemed to get even less and less dignified as they worked their way through their eighth decade together.

“She doesn’t listen to me at all,” said Dad sullenly. “You know those personal-injury traveling booths where dumb people who feign accidents go to grub for cash?”

Joffy said that he did.

“They had one up at the Brunel Centre. A display with a table and some chairs. Your mother pretended to fall over it, then claimed she’d broken her hip and told them she wanted to make a claim—against them.”

“How did it work out?”

“There were three other personal-injury lawyers there, and they all started fighting to represent her. I had to call the police when it came to blows. During the melee she crept away giggling and said that watching personal-injury lawyers punching one another had an inexplicable joy to it.”

“At least it keeps her from playing dominoes at the day center.”

“She’s always been feisty,” said Dad with a warm smile. “Do you remember that trip we took to the Atlas Mountains when your mother tried to smuggle a live goat across the border, wrapped up in a carpet?”

“No,” I said.

“Joffy?”

“No.”

“Damn,” said my father. “All those memories, and none of them shared.”

11. Monday: Evening

11.

Monday: Evening