“Come again?”

It was Beck, one of the roommates, looking at him from the doorway with a peculiar expression. Beck was a cadaverous being who worked as a sound engineer and wrote reviews of films no one but him had ever seen, or perhaps did not yet exist.

“I didn’t say anything,” said Crosetti.

“Yeah, you were talking, loud, like you were pissed off. I thought you had someone in there with you and then I remembered you came in alone.”

“Oh, then I was talking to myself. I’m having a psychotic break is all.”

“Fuck, man, join the club. If you need a lobotomy I could start sharpening the screwdriver.”

“It’s a girl,” Crosetti admitted. “A girl has driven me crazy. She dumped me and now she wants me to rescue her. This is the second time for the dump ’n’ rescue motif.”

“Whatever. I tend to stick to the gospel according to St. Nelson Algren: never fuck anyone with more problems than you have yourself. Of course, he fucked Simone de Beauvoir…”

“Thank you. I’ll remember that in my next life. Meanwhile, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. Can I borrow your computer? I need some maps.”

It took him the usual forty-five minutes to clear the city but on the thruway past the Tappan Zee he made up for lost time. The old Fury had been maintained in perfect trim: inside was a 440-cubic-inch V-8 engine and outside was waxed midnight blue lacquer, plus the various shields and decals that police officers use to identify themselves to other police officers so as to render their cars virtually immune to any ticketing, whether rolling or parked. Crosetti cranked it up to ninety and made it to Albany in a little over two hours. Another ninety miles and seventy minutes got him to Pottersville, where he filled his tank and ate a horrible gas station microwave meal, by which time it was dark and snowing, fat floaters that seemed the size of golf balls when they hit the glass, although it was still too warm for the snow to stick to the asphalt of the highway and he did not slow down. Crosetti was deep in the blankness of the freeway dream, on autopilot, his brain running with plots of movies, odd facts, straining for coherent memories of trivial life occurrences, including especially his pathetically brief skein of days in the company of Carolyn Rolly.

State Route 2, which he turned onto fifteen minutes later, was a narrow tunnel of headlight through a shake-up snow-globe toy; after the zoom of the thruway, Crosetti felt like he was parked. He drove for what seemed like an impossibly long interval and at last a few lights shone ahead, which was New Weimar, two gas stations, some tourist traps, a scatter of houses, and then the search for the sign that marked the gravel road to Lake Henry. He missed it once and had to slew the car around on the snowy road and backtrack until he found the thing, bent over at an angle and full of bullet holes. Thus did the armed locals take out their class rage on the rich people who owned the lake.

An even narrower tunnel now and here the snow was sticking well, making the car fishtail on the hills. Time slowed; he lost track of its passage. The Fury boasted only an old-fashioned AM radio, which, for the last dozen miles or so, had produced only static-filled country music. He switched it off. Now only the hiss of the wipers, the competent purr of the great engine. A flash of yellow ahead a double arrow, the road ending in a T. He switched on the dome light and read his maps. A right turn then, and shortly there appeared a cluster of mailboxes, thick with the wet snow, and a white-clotted driveway. He pulled the car forward a dozen yards, took a four-cell flashlight from the glove compartment, and started down the drive. It was a little after three in the morning.

And here was the house, a substantial country lodge made of stripped logs, with a sharply peaked roof and a wide veranda running along three sides. A thin light spread from the front windows and made a yellowish patch on the new snow. As Crosetti walked around the house he felt, rather than saw, the presence of the lake, absolute blackness where the snow ended, with a thin white finger pointing into it, the dock.

He carefully mounted the steps to the veranda, pressed his face against the lighted window, saw a large room, rustic furniture made of polished cedar logs and upholstered in red plaid, a huge stone fireplace with a fire blazing away in it, Indian rugs on the floor, a moosehead over the fireplace. On another wall was a large built-in bookcase and an elaborate and expensive-looking sound system. No movement visible, no sounds. He tried the door, which swung open when he turned the brass knob, and he entered and closed the door behind him. Once inside he could hear over the whisper of the fire some domestic sounds from another room, clink of crockery, and a man’s humming. The place smelled of cedar, and the fire, and, faintly, fresh coffee. There was a round pine table near the side windows with a glowing laptop computer on it. Next to it was a familiar thick padded envelope. Crosetti was about to take a peek at the screen when Jake Mishkin entered the room carrying a steaming mug.

He stopped short and stared. “Crosetti? What’re you doing here?”

“I was in the neighborhood. I thought I’d drop by.”

Mishkin smiled faintly. “That’s a good line. Would you like some coffee? I’m having mine with Irish whiskey in it.”

“Thank you. That’d be great.”

Mishkin started to go back to the kitchen, then stopped and went to the laptop and snapped the screen down. Crosetti sat on the sofa that faced the fire and gave way a little to his exhaustion, feeling now that strange sensation one has after a marathon drive, of still traveling fast behind the wheel of a car. In a few minutes Mishkin returned with another mug and set it on the pickled pine coffee table in front of the couch.

“I trust this is not about your check,” said Mishkin after they had both drunk a little.

“No, I got that all right, thanks.”

“Then, to what do I owe…?”

“Carolyn Rolly. I got a panicky call from her giving me the address of this place and so I came up.”

“You drove-what? Eight hours through a snowstorm because Carolyn Rolly beckoned?”

“Yeah, it’s kind of hard to explain.”

“True love.”

“Not really, but…it’s something. Basically, I’m just being a schmuck.”

“I can relate to that,” said Mishkin, “as it happens, she’s not here, and I should point out that I’m expecting other visitors. There might be unpleasantness.”

“You mean Shvanov.”

“And others.”

“For instance?”

“For instance, Mickey Haas, the famous Shakespearean scholar and a dear friend of mine. This is his place we’re in. He’s coming up to authenticate our manuscript.”

“I thought you needed a lot of technical equipment for that, carbon dating, ink analysis…”

“Yes, but clever forgers can fake the ink and paper. What can’t be faked is Shakespeare’s actual writing, and Mickey is the man for that.”

“And he’s with Shvanov?”

“That’s a long story I’m afraid.”

Crosetti shrugged. “I got plenty of time, unless you’re going to force me at gunpoint out into a raging blizzard.”

Mishkin stared at him for a while and Crosetti held the stare for an unnatural interval. At last, Mishkin sighed and said, “We’ll need more coffee.”

Another pot, then, also with whiskey, and toward the end of it they dispensed with the coffee. They talked in the manner of strangers who have survived a shipwreck or some historic disaster which, while it leaves similar marks, does nothing to provide elective affinity. The two men were not friends, nor ever would be, but the thing that had brought them together, to this house on this snowy night, that lay now in its envelope on the round table, allowed them to speak to each other more openly than either of them normally would; and the whiskey helped.