In the terminal, the woman checking them in held up his driver’s license and said brightly, “Joe Sharkey,” then handed him the license with his boarding pass, beaming as though presenting him with a gift.

Sharkey rallied a little at the thought that she’d recognized him; he stood straighter and managed a thin smile and snatched at his belt, pulling up his pants—his weight loss meant that his clothes bagged and flapped.

“Gate five,” the woman said, then looked past him, raising her hand. “Next in line.”

She had no idea. Sharkey said, “I hate being with all these people,” and gestured to the other travelers, jostling him. They oppressed him, he was one of them, he found them clumsy and slow, burdened by bags and cases. You left home and then you were in the world, and the world was full of people pushing past you who didn’t know who you were. And it was as though you didn’t exist.

He was muttering, on the verge of cursing out loud, when he saw a woman approaching with a wheelchair.

“Is that thing for me?”

“I asked for it,” Olive said. “We’ll get through quicker,”

Sharkey was at first confused, but he sat, and, pushed by a Filipina attendant, a young woman in a uniform, her nametag LAKAMBINI, was eased through the security zone. When their flight was called, the woman wheeled him down the jetway and tipped him through the doorway, then helped him to his seat. As Olive had hoped, he was calmer as a result; the efficiency quieted him.

In the window seat beside him, Olive said, “This is the right thing to do.” She took a folder labeled FLORISTAN from her bag and began to flick through the papers inside: travel brochures, hotel and rental car confirmations, lists of offices and locations. On top, in a separate stack, the papers that Stickney had copied for them, the details of the dead man’s history. “You might think it’s melodramatic for me to say this, but your life depends on it. That’s how I feel.”

Sharkey grasped the folder and opened it on his lap. He looked at the top sheet of paper, running his eyes over it but not reading it, merely allowing himself to be impressed by the close print and the detail. It was as though he were not looking at words at all but rather at a thickened mass of complex equations that amounted to a kind of formal magic for those with the time and patience to separate the lines and translate it. But the idea of doing that himself—reading it—fatigued him.

“We’ll make a schedule from this.”

“Shed-jewell,” he said, mocking her.

“Plonker,” she said.

But he was comforted by the fact that Olive understood the challenge—the quest—and was taking charge. He placed his hand on that top sheet as though drawing warmth from it.