An LBI subsidiary, ArDee Enterprises, had recently won a big contract to supply the high-grade body armor that American forces, as improvised explosive devices began exploding in every corner of Iraq, had belatedly discovered themselves in sore need of. West Virginia, which had cheap labor and a lax regulatory environment, and which had unexpectedly provided Bush-Cheney with their margin of victory in 2000-choosing the Republican candidate for the first time since the Nixon landslide of 1972-was viewed very favorably in the circles Vin Haven ran in. ArDee Enterprises was hastily constructing a body-armor plant in Whitman County, and Haven, catching ArDee before hiring for the factory had commenced, was able to secure a guarantee of 120 permanent jobs for the people of Forster Hollow in exchange for a package of concessions so generous that ArDee would be getting their labor practically for free. Haven promised Coyle Mathis, by way of Lalitha, to pay for free high-quality housing and job training for him and the other Forster Hollow families, and further sweetened the deal with a lump-sum payment to ArDee large enough to fund the workers’ health insurance and retirement plans for the next twenty years. As for job security, it was enough to point to the declarations, issued by various members of the Bush administration, that America would be defending itself in the Middle East for generations to come. There was no foreseeable end to the war on terror and, ergo, no end to the demand for body armor.

Walter, who had a low opinion of the Bush-Cheney venture in Iraq and an even lower opinion of the moral hygiene of defense contractors, was uneasy about working with LBI and providing further ammunition for the lefty environmentalists who opposed him in West Virginia. But Lalitha was intensely enthusiastic. “It’s perfect,” she told Walter. “This way, we can be more than a model of science-based reclamation. We can also be a model of compassionate relocation and retraining of people displaced by endangered-species conservation.”

“Kind of shitty luck, of course, for the people who sold out early,” Walter said.

“If they’re still struggling, we can offer them jobs, too.”

“For an additional however many million.”

“And the fact that it’s patriotic is also perfect!” Lalitha said. “The people will be doing something to help their country in time of war.”

“These people don’t strike me as losing a lot of sleep over helping their country.”

“No, Walter, you’re wrong about that. Luanne Coffey has two sons in Iraq. She hates the government for not doing more to protect them. She and I actually talked about that. She hates the government, but she hates the terrorists even more. This is perfect.”

And so, in December, Vin Haven flew into Charleston in his jet and personally accompanied Lalitha to Forster Hollow while Walter stayed simmering, with his anger and humiliation, in a motel room in Beckley. It had been no surprise to hear from Lalitha that Coyle Mathis was still given to lengthily riffing on what an arrogant, prissy-ass fool her boss was. She’d played the role of good cop to the hilt; and Vin Haven, who did have the common touch (as evidenced by his friendship with George W.), was apparently reasonably well tolerated in Forster Hollow as well. While a small band of protesters from outside the Nine Mile valley, led by nutcase Jocelyn Zorn, marched with placards (don’t trust the trust) outside the tiny elementary school where the meeting was held, all eighty families from the hollow signed away their rights and accepted, on the spot, eighty whopping certified checks drawn on the Trust’s account in Washington.

And now, ninety days later, Forster Hollow was a ghost hamlet owned by the Trust and available for demolition at 6 a.m. tomorrow. Walter had seen no reason to attend the first morning of demolition, and had seen several reasons not to, but Lalitha was thrilled by the imminent removal of the last permanent structures in the Warbler Park. He’d lured her, in hiring her, with the vision of a hundred square miles entirely free of human taint, and she’d bought the vision big-time. Since she was the one who’d brought the vision to the brink of realization, he couldn’t very well deny her the satisfaction of going to Forster Hollow. He wanted to give her every little thing he could, since he couldn’t give her his love. He indulged her the way he’d often been tempted to indulge Jessica but had mostly refrained from, for the sake of good parenting.

Lalitha was hunched forward with anticipation as she drove the rental car into Beckley, where rain was falling more heavily.

“That road’s going to be a mess tomorrow,” Walter said, looking out at the rain and noting, with displeasure, the elderly sourness in his voice.

“We’ll get up at four and take it slow,” Lalitha said.

“Ha, that’ll be a first. Have I ever seen you take a road slow?”

“I’m very excited, Walter!”

“I shouldn’t even be here,” he said sourly. “I should be doing that press conference tomorrow morning.”

“Cynthia says Mondays are better for the news cycle,” Lalitha said, referring to their press person, whose job, until now, had consisted mainly of avoiding contact with the press.

“I don’t know which I’m dreading more,” Walter said. “That nobody will show up, or that we’ll have a room full of reporters.”

“Oh, we definitely want the room full. This is really amazing news, if you explain it right.”

“All I know is I’m dreading it.”

Staying in hotels with Lalitha had become perhaps the hardest single part of their working relationship. In Washington, where she lived upstairs from him, she at least was on a different floor, and Patty was around to generally disturb the picture. At the Days Inn in Beckley, they fitted identical keycards into identical doors, fifteen feet from each other, and entered rooms whose identical profound drabness only a torrid illicit liaison could have overcome. Walter couldn’t avoid thinking about how alone Lalitha was in her identical room. Part of his feeling of inferiority consisted of straightforward envy-envy of her youth; envy of her innocent idealism; envy of the simplicity of her situation, as compared to the impossibility of his-and it seemed to him that her room, though outwardly identical, was the room of fullness, the room of beautiful and allowable yearning, while his was the room of emptiness and sterile prohibition. He turned on CNN, for the blare of it, and watched a report on the latest carnage in Iraq while he undressed for a lonely shower.

The previous morning, before he’d left for the airport, Patty had appeared in the doorway of their bedroom. “Let me put it as plainly as possible,” she said. “You have my permission.”

“Permission for what?”

“You know what for. And I’m saying you have it.”

He might almost have believed she meant this if the expression on her face hadn’t been so ragged, and if she hadn’t been wringing her hands so piteously as she spoke.

“Whatever you’re talking about,” he said, “I don’t want your permission.”

She’d looked at him beseechingly, and then despairingly, and left him alone. Half an hour later, on his way out, he’d tapped on the door of the little room where she did her writing and her e-mailing and, more and more frequently of late, her sleeping. “Sweetie,” he said through the door. “I’ll see you on Thursday night.” When she gave no answer, he knocked again and went in. She was sitting on the foldout sofa, squeezing the fingers of one hand in the fist of the other. Her face was red, wrecked, tear-tracked. He crouched at her feet and held her hands, which were aging faster than the rest of her; were bony and thin-skinned. “I love you,” he said. “Do you understand that?”

She nodded quickly, biting her lips, appreciative but unconvinced. “OK,” she said in a whispery squeak. “You’d better go.”