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second year of an ongoing project.
    The stark fields and wetlands featured in the website photos for the Vastmanland dig looked both alien and familiar, perfectly suited to his rather bleak mood. In the forefront of one photo, several muddy young men and women dressed in colourful raingear grinned wildly at the camera, arms around one another. They were likely as lost and bewildered as he felt—why Vastmanland, when there were the Roman baths in sunny and grand Pollena Trocchia, for God’s sake?—but they seemed happy with the prospect of searching for Viking artifacts in the muck.
    Of course, the notion of putting his dissertation on hold to pick up an archaeologist’s shovel was laughable and dreadful. Tamba would eat him alive. It was too late to enrol in the field school—it was intended mostly for undergraduates wanting to learn basic archaeological methodologies—but the school encouraged observation or volunteer participation from doctoral students. He sent some e-mails and put himself on the volunteer list, just for the hell of it. If he could at least toy with the possibility of an exit strategy, it might take the pressure off writing his conference paper.
    â€œWhat would you say,” he said to Christine one night, “if I ditched the conference to travel to Sweden?”
    â€œI’d say it was hilarious,” she said. He lolled in the middle of the bed, post-sex, while she checked e-mail on her phone. She’d showed up at his place late, after drafting the paper she’d be presenting at the conference, a summary of her work over the last year.
    â€œI’ve been thinking I’ll be busy over the next while,” she said without looking up. “Probably won’t have much time to spend together.”
    â€œWe don’t already. Stay with me while you work,” he said lightly. “That way we’ll see each other nights, at least.” He admired, maybe loved, how she was less interested in theory than the emotional core of her research—the myriad inner thoughts of parents who anchored themselves by rope and harness to their children and watched them climb, grasp, and slip.
    â€œThanks. Thank you.” She put her phone away and placed her hand on his chest. “But I need my desk, my books. I like our arrangement.”
    â€œIt does keep things exciting,” he agreed, both relieved and disappointed. They were silent for a while.
    â€œActually, I wouldn’t find it funny,” she said. “It’d be a colossal fuck-up.”
    He laughed softly, trying to reassure her. “I’ll be all recharged, get a whole new perspective on my work. Much better than me serving up some bullshit about Guy Debord and dérive.”
    Later, too late, he would realize he’d made the classic male mistake of thinking that if she didn’t want anything serious with him, then she didn’t want anything serious at all, with anyone. There was a line in a movie he’d liked—something about how you end up hating the person for the same reasons you fell in love with them.
    In May he withdrew his conference paper at the last moment, bought a plane ticket, and flew to Stockholm.

5

    In the morning, Tanner checked the ratio of clove oil to water in the cooler, Paul’s tagging technique, and all the other details that would make the job run more smoothly. They processed the handful of trout in the traps, then entered the data and made their eggs and oatmeal to eat on the edge of a small but sheer bank at the confluence of Basket Creek and the Immitoin. The river was three times as wide as the creek and ran different shades of blue and silver midstream, steel grey and pale green along the forested banks on the other side. Paul watched a slate-coloured dipper bob from stone to stone and then plunge underwater.
    â€œSo, you feel comfortable with everything?” Tanner asked.
    The thrill of finally being abandoned and left alone