Murray and I walked across campus in our European manner, a serenely reflective pace, heads lowered as weconversed. Sometimes one of us gripped the other near the elbow, a gesture of intimacy and physical support. Othertimes we walked slightly apart, Murray's hands clasped behind his back, Gladney's folded monkishly at the abdomen,a somewhat worried touch.

　　"Your German is coming around?""I still speak it badly. The words give me trouble. Howard and I are working on opening remarks for the conference.""You call him Howard?""Not to his face. I don't call him anything to his face and he doesn't call me anything to my face. It's that kind ofrelationship. Do you see him at all? You live under the same roof, after all.""Fleeting glimpses. The other boarders seem to prefer it that way. He barely exists, we feel.""There's something about him. I'm not sure what it is exactly.""He's flesh-colored," Murray said.

　　"True. But that's not what makes me uneasy.""Soft hands.""Is that it?""Soft hands in a man give me pause. Soft skin in general. Baby skin. I don't think he shaves.""What else?" I said.

　　"Flecks of dry spittle at the corners of his mouth.""You're right," I said excitedly. "Dry spit. I feel it hit me in the face when he leans forward to articulate. What else?""And a way of looking over a person's shoulder.""You see all this in fleeting glimpses. Remarkable. What else?" I demanded.

　　"And a rigid carriage that seems at odds with his shuffling walk.""Yes, he walks without moving his arms. What else, what else?""And something else, something above and beyond all this, something eerie and terrible.""Exactly. But what is it? Something I can't quite identify.""There's a strange air about him, a certain mood, a sense, a presence, an emanation.""But what?" I said, surprised to find myself deeply and personally concerned, colored dots dancing at the edge of myvision.

　　We'd walked thirty paces when Murray began to nod. I watched his face as we walked. He nodded crossing the streetand kept nodding all the way past the music library. I walked with him step for step, clutching his elbow, watchinghis face, waiting for him to speak, not interested in the fact that he'd taken me completely out of my way, and he wasstill nodding as we approached the entrance to Wilmot Grange, a restored nineteenth-century building at the edge ofthe campus.

　　"But what?" I said. "But what?"It wasn't until four days later that he called me at home, at one in the morning, to whisper helpfully in my ear, "Helooks like a man who finds dead bodies erotic."I went to one last lesson. The walls and windows were obscured by accumulated objects, which seemed now to beedging toward the middle of the room. The bland-faced man before me closed his eyes and spoke, reciting usefultourist phrases. "Where am I?" "Can you help me?" "It is night and I am lost." I could hardly bear to sit there.

　　Murray's remark fixed him forever to a plausible identity. What had been elusive about Howard Dunlop was nowpinned down. What had been strange and half creepy was now diseased. A grim lasciviousness escaped his body andseemed to circulate through the barricaded room.

　　In truth I would miss the lessons. I would also miss the dogs, the German shepherds. One day they were simply gone.

　　Needed elsewhere perhaps or sent back to the desert to sharpen their skills. The men in Mylex suits were still around,however, carrying instruments to measure and probe, riding through town in teams of six or eight in chunky peglikevehicles that resembled Lego toys.

　　I stood by Wilder's bed watching him sleep. The voice next door said: "In the four-hundred-thousand-dollar NabiscoDinah Shore."This was the night the insane asylum burned down. Heinrich and I got in the car and went to watch. There were othermen at the scene with their adolescent boys. Evidently fathers and sons seek fellowship at such events. Fires helpdraw them closer, provide a conversational wedge. There is equipment to appraise, the technique of firemen todiscuss and criticize. The manliness of firefighting—the virility of fires, one might say—suits the kind of laconicdialogue that fathers and sons can undertake without awkwardness or embarrassment.

　　"Most of these fires in old buildings start in the electrical wiring," Heinrich said. "Faulty wiring. That's one phraseyou can't hang around for long without hearing.""Most people don't burn to death," I said. 'They die of smoke inhalation."'That's the other phrase," he said.

　　Flames roared through the dormers. We stood across the street watching part of the roof give way, a ta............