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a desperate character, a violent and reckless sort who’d broken out of the ship’s brig, assaulted several of his shipmates and taken a suicidal plunge over the side. The Coast Guard had given up its search after two eyewitnesses from theartists’ colony—Ruth couldn’t help feeling a little stab of disappointment when she wasn’t mentioned by name—had seen him come ashore on the southeast tip of Tupelo Island. The authorities were pursuing the matter. He was believed to be armed and dangerous.
    Ruth had had to fight for the paper—this was the biggest thing to hit Tupelo Island since the swine flu epidemic, and everybody wanted to be in on the action. The paper arrived, a day late as usual, two mornings after the encounter on the bay. In the interim she and Saxby had spoken by phone with reporters from the
Atlanta Constitution,
the
Savannah Star
and the bi-monthly
Tupelo Island Breeze;
a special agent of the INS from Savannah who identified himself as Detlef Abercorn; the county sheriff (or “shurf,” as the locals had it); and a Mr. Shikuma, president of the Japan-America Society in New York. Mr. Shikuma, in a flurry of thank-yous and apologies, had wanted to congratulate them on identifying Seaman Tanaka and to assure them that the young sailor, though mentally deranged, would cause no one any irreparable harm.
    Actually, Ruth liked the attention. She hadn’t been herself since she and Saxby had arrived at Thanatopsis House. Perhaps she’d felt intimidated by the Peter Anserines and Laura Grobians, perhaps she’d felt threatened by her contemporaries, as she had at Iowa and Irvine. Certainly she felt awkward about her special relationship with Saxby and the sort of gossip and backbiting it was sure to provoke:
Ruth Dershowitz? Who is she anyway? I mean, what has she written? Or does she even have to write—isn’t she the son’s latest squeeze, isn’t that it?
In any case, she’d held her peace with the others—she hadn’t said much of anything to anyone. Oh, she’d exchanged banalities over cocktails or dinner with whoever sat to her left or right, but she hadn’t committed herself at all—the ground was shaky yet and she was still learning to walk. But on the night they came in off the bay, she couldn’t help herself.
    It was late, past two, and the only light in the big house came from the billiard room on the second floor. They took the stairs two at a time, Ruth struggling to match Saxby’s long strides. Shewas out of breath when he flung open the door and tugged her into the room. She saw wainscoting, a chandelier, lamps in the corners. It took her a moment, blinking like someone roused from a sound sleep, to identify the usual crowd of insomniacs.
    Irving Thalamus was there, sitting at the card table, his fingers fidgeting as he tried to fight down the impulse to look up and give away his hand. A poet named Bob sat across from him. Bob had a book out from Wesleyan and he was very serious, though he looked more like a beer distributor than an assistant professor at Emory, which he was. Next to Bob, hunched over a Diet Coke and scratching herself unconsciously, was Ina Soderbord, a square-faced, big-shouldered blonde from Minnesota who wrote as if she were in the throes of delirium tremens. In the corner, enfolded in her metronomic silence, the walleyed composer nodded over a book, while the punk sculptress, in leather shorts and a T-shirt the size of a pup tent, leaned over the billiard table in a blaze of light.
    Before anyone could greet them, before anyone could glance up with a casual “hello” or “what’s up?,” Saxby was spewing out the story in his usual hyperbolic style, the encounter on the bay no less stupefying than an encounter with outerspace aliens. But they all loved Saxby. Loved him for his wit and the square of his shoulders and his utter lack of interest in things artistic. Ruth