He had to find it. This jester, this tease, this invader that lurked like a virus in some secret body cells between outbreaks—he had this idea that if he fixed it, he could repair his life. Yes, everything would be better then. He could handle the schedule, the layoffs, the night administrator’s music that smashed its way down the hall every night at eleven, even finding Joanna in bed with another man—they’d all be manageable, common failures, he thought, setbacks anyone could understand, if only it weren’t for this bug, this flaw, this break in his understanding of how the world was made.

“But your stock?”

Harry gave a big laugh. “Oh, yeah. The stock. The way they keep you here, hanging. Well, fuck the stock. I never cared much about money. It’s only this place that made me want money. Fuck it. I have a house, a car, a wife who works, and about a hundred vendor-logo T-shirts. What the fuck do I need money for? The work here’s not interesting anymore. Nobody cares about really interesting stuff, or even about the quality of averagely interesting stuff. But—Fuck. I’m sorry, Ethan. I shouldn’t be saying any of this. I should be telling you this is a great place, but right now I just need new challenges.”

They sat silently. Ethan felt one question after another come up in him, then subside as already answered or unanswerable.