The plane bumped, as if its bottom had just scraped over a boulder, then rose up. The cabin was shot through with milky sunlight, and when Desmond looked out again, there was a field of dark blue beneath them. They were over the ocean now, making their way south along the coast. Within minutes, they’d be flying over Manhattan. For one reckless moment, he imagined that if he gazed out the window, he’d spot Russell down there, walking along Broadway, maybe reading the letter Desmond had written after visiting Rosemary and had finally put into the mailbox.

He’d gone through eight drafts of the thing. He started out with a raw, emotional plea he’d typed in a wine-fueled frenzy of sentimentality. “I don’t care what you’ve done or with whom, I don’t want you to move out, if that’s what you’re contemplating. I’ll be back in a little more than a month. We’ll work it out then. Let me finish this semester and finish this book. I feel certain I’m very close to finding what I’m missing, and all I’m asking for is the quiet space to do it.” The next morning he’d woken up, reread the page-and-a-half letter and found it a bit too conciliatory. It wasn’t strictly true that he didn’t care what Russell had been up to. “I don’t know what you’ve been doing, or with whom . . .” he revised. That afternoon, as he was reading over the second draft in his office at Deerforth, he’d been struck by the pleading tone in the part about finishing his book. He scratched out the “quiet space” and penciled in “I need a little fresh air, too.” At midnight, sitting at his desk, he’d retyped the fourth draft. “I know what you’ve been up to.” And the next morning: “If you want to move out so badly that you’d consider returning to that cell on C . . .” Over lunch, red pencil in hand: “I haven’t exactly been crying into my pillow every night, you know.” The many drafts were so jumbled in his mind, he wasn’t entirely sure what was in the version he’d mailed, but he was fairly certain there was some veiled reference to a handsome, bisexual architect, and to the wonderful emotional freedom he was experiencing now that he could lay claim to a larger portion of his own identity.

Jane grabbed the armrests of her seat. “Where did Tim end up?” she asked.

“Somewhere in the back,” Desmond said. “I can’t figure him out. I don’t know if he’s a dolt or a genius, although I have the feeling it’s either one or the other, no middle ground.”