“Fuck that. We’re friends.” Time sounded sure and serene. Jerry feared he wouldn’t have done nearly so well with their roles reversed. The old riff on the Kipling poem also crossed his mind: If you can keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs, chances are you don’t understand the situation.

When he walked into the apartment, he set down his bat and glove and threw his Angels cap onto the couch like a Frisbee. The King of Siam plainly didn’t know whether to attack it or run away. Anna wrinkled her nose and pointed toward the bathroom. “To the showers, Pete Rose!”

“You think I stink now, you should have seen me chasing fly balls,” he replied with dignity. Anna laughed, so he supposed he broke even, anyhow.

The quarter dragged on. During the last week of instruction, students in Jerry’s sections who’d spent the time since January doing nothing swarmed to his office to find out how to get As just the same. He did what he could for them, knowing what he’d probably do to them when he read their finals. That had saddened him in his first quarter TAing. He was hardened to it now.

And, one morning when he didn’t have to be on campus, he visited the Bank of America on Gardena Boulevard. He took out $8,500 in cash. If he had to disappear in a hurry, he wouldn’t be paying for things with a check or his credit card, not unless he wanted to yell Here I am! at the top of his lungs.

It was funny, in a black way. The CIA had dropped a small fortune on him to make sure he kept his mouth shut. He might end up using a chunk of it to fly under their radar. Or he might put it back later if he was worrying about nothing.

He wished he thought he was.

He wondered whether the bank would hassle him for taking out so much cash. But, by luck, he dealt with the same teller he’d had when he wondered about the money to begin with. “Hello again!” she said and didn’t ask him anything except what kind of bills he wanted and, after she gave him the fat envelope, “Would you like our guard to go out to your car with you?”

“That’d be terrific. Thanks!” he said.

The guard’s name badge said he was Paul. He was a black man in his forties; he wore a Stetson and a pistol on his hip. He walked with a limp. “Sorry I’m not quicker,” he said, his voice deep and also slow. “Stopped somethin’ in Korea a long time ago.”

“It’s okay. Take it easy. I’m not in a hurry,” Jerry said.

When Paul got a look at the Rambler, he said, “You oughta buy yourself some better wheels with that there money.”