“So Richard’s still working with you guys?” Joey said.

“Um, yes,” Lalitha said. “Yes, he’s being very helpful. In fact, he just told me the White Stripes might help us with our big event in August.”

Joey, as he frowned and considered this, took care not to look at Walter.

“We should go to that event,” Connie said to Joey. “Is it OK if we come?” she asked Walter.

“Of course it’s OK,” he said, forcing a smile. “Should be a lot of fun.”

“I like the White Stripes a lot,” she declared happily, in her subtextless way.

“I like you a lot,” Walter said. “I’m really glad you’re part of our family. I’m really glad you’re here tonight.”

“I’m happy to be here, too.”

Joey didn’t seem to mind this sentimental talk, but his thoughts were clearly elsewhere. On Richard, on his mother, on the family disaster that was unfolding. And there was nothing Walter could say to make it any easier for him.

“I can’t do it,” Walter told Lalitha when they’d returned, by themselves, to the mansion. “I can’t have that asshole involved anymore.”

“We already had this discussion,” she said, walking briskly down the corridor to the kitchen. “We already resolved this.”

“Well, we need to have it again,” he said, pursuing her.

“No, we don’t. Did you see how Connie’s face lit up when I mentioned the White Stripes? Who else can get us talent like that? We made our decision, it was a good one, and I really don’t need to hear how jealous you are of the person your wife had sex with. I’m tired, and I drank too much, and I need to go to bed now.”

“He was my best friend,” Walter murmured.

“I don’t care. I really don’t, Walter. I know you think I’m just another young person, but in fact I’m older than your children, I’m almost twenty-eight. I knew it was a mistake to fall in love with you. I knew you weren’t ready, and now I’m in love with you, and all you can still think about is her.”

“I think about you constantly. I depend on you so much.”

“You have sex with me because I want you and you can. But everybody’s world still revolves around your wife. What is so special about her, I will never understand. She spends her whole life upsetting other people. And I just need a little break from it, so I can get some sleep. So maybe you should sleep in your own bed tonight, and think about what you want to do.”

“What did I say?” he pleaded. “I thought we were having a nice birthday.”

“I’m tired. It was a tiring evening. I’ll see you in the morning.”

They parted without a kiss. On his home phone he found a message from Jessica, timed carefully while he was out to dinner, wishing him a happy birthday. “I’m sorry I haven’t returned your messages,” she said, “I’ve just been really busy and not sure what I wanted to say. But I was thinking of you today, and I hope you had a nice day. Maybe we can talk sometime, although I’m not sure when I’m going to have a chance.”

Click.

It was a relief, for the next week, to sleep by himself. To be in a room still full of Patty’s clothes and books and pictures, to learn to steel himself against her. During the daytime, there was plenty of deferred office work to do: land-management structures to be organized in Colombia and West Virginia, a media counteroffensive to be launched, fresh donors to be sought. Walter had even thought it might be possible to take a break from sex with Lalitha, but their daily propinquity made it not possible-they needed and needed. He did, however, repair to his own bed for sleep.

The night before they flew to West Virginia, he was packing his overnight bag and got a call from Joey, who reported that he’d decided not to blow the whistle on LBI and Kenny Bartles. “They’re disgusting,” he said. “But my friend Jonathan keeps saying I’d only be hurting myself if I went public. So I’m thinking I’ll just give the extra money away. It’ll spare me a lot of taxes at least. But I wanted to make sure you still think it’s OK.”

“It’s fine, Joey,” Walter said. “It’s fine with me. I know how ambitious you are, I know how hard it must be to give away all that money. That’s a lot to do right there.”

“Well, it’s not like I’m behind on the deal. I’m just not ahead. And now Connie can go back to school, so that’s good. I’m thinking of taking a year off to work and let her catch up with me.”

“That’s great. It’s great to see the two of you taking care of each other like that. Was there anything else?”

“Well, only that I saw Mom.”

Walter was still holding two neckties, a red one and a green one, that he’d been trying to choose between. The choice, he realized, was not particularly consequential. “You did?” he said, choosing the green one. “Where? In Alexandria?”

“No, in New York.”

“So she’s in New York.”

“Well, actually, Jersey City,” Joey said.

Walter’s chest tightened and stayed tightened.

“Yeah, Connie and I wanted to tell her in person. You know, about being married. And it wasn’t so bad actually. She was actually fairly nice to Connie. You know, still patronizing, and sort of fake, the way she kept laughing, but not mean. I guess she’s distracted with a lot of other things. Anyway, we thought it went pretty well. At least Connie thought so. I thought it was kind of ehhnh. But I wanted you to know she knows, so, I don’t know, if you ever talk to her, you don’t have to keep it secret anymore.”

Walter looked at his left hand, which had turned white and looked very bare without its wedding ring. “She’s staying with Richard,” he managed to say.

“Um, yeah, I guess, for the moment,” Joey said. “Was I not supposed to say that?”

“Was he there? When you were there?”

“Yeah, actually. He was. And it was fun for Connie, because she’s fairly into his music. He let her see his guitars and everything. I don’t know if I told you she’s thinking of learning guitar. She’s got a really pretty singing voice.”

Where exactly Walter had thought Patty was staying he couldn’t have said. With her friend Cathy Schmidt, with one of her other old teammates, maybe with Jessica, conceivably even with her parents. But having heard her proclaim so righteously that everything was over between her and Richard, he hadn’t imagined for one second that she might be in Jersey City.

“Dad?”

“What.”

“Well, I know it’s weird, OK? The whole thing is very weird. But you’ve got a girlfriend, too, right? So, like, that’s it, right? Things are different now, and we should all just start dealing with it. Don’t you think?”

“Yeah,” Walter said. “You’re right. We need to deal with it.”

As soon as he was off the phone, he pulled open a dresser drawer, took his wedding ring from the cuff-link box in which he’d left it, and flushed it down the toilet. With a sweep of his arm, he knocked all of Patty’s pictures from the top of her dresser-Joey and Jessica as innocents, team photos of girl basketball players in heartbreakingly seventies-style uniforms, her favorite and most flattering pictures of him-and crushed and ground the frames and glass with his feet until he lost interest and had to beat his head against the wall. Hearing that she’d gone back to Richard ought to have liberated him, ought to have freed him to enjoy Lalitha with the cleanest of consciences. But it didn’t feel like a liberation, it felt like a death. He could see now (as Lalitha herself had seen all along) that the last three weeks had merely been a kind of payback, a treat he was due in recompense for Patty’s betrayal. Despite his avowals that the marriage was over, he hadn’t believed it one tiny bit. He threw himself onto the bed and sobbed in a state to which all previous states of existence seemed infinitely preferable. The world was moving ahead, the world was full of winners, LBI and Kenny Bartles cashing in, Connie going back to school, Joey doing the right thing, Patty living with a rock star, Lalitha fighting her good fight, Richard going back to his music, Richard getting great press for being far more offensive than Walter, Richard charming Connie, Richard bringing in the White Stripes… while Walter was left behind with the dead and dying and forgotten, the endangered species of the world, the nonadaptive…