HIS LAST STOP BEFORE going to Barnhill involved a tactical, tail-between-his-legs retreat to the role of passive consumer. According to the website of the Jura Stores, the proprietors had arrived from the mainland a decade earlier to sell organic vegetables, fairly traded and shade-grown coffee, and free-range meat no doubt slaughtered with the utmost humanity and compassion. All at obscene prices. The Bennetts struck Ray as that breed of idealistic entrepreneurs eager to make their fortune in some environmentally or spiritually sound way, perhaps even according to some sad misunderstanding of sammā ājīva, but were greedy as any slumlords.

Mrs. Bennett had a long face and a toothy, equine smile that caused her to whistle as she spoke. It threw Ray off at first. He thought she was summoning an animal, but she said, “You’ll be wanting a pair of wellieth, I take it?”

“That won’t be necessary. In fact, I just bought these boots.”

Her husband was nowhere to be seen, but the distorted noise of a radio came from another room. Pitcairn, having already exhausted the harmonic range of his truck’s horn hurrying Ray along, now stood in the doorway smoking a cigarette. “I told him his boots were for shite,” he said.

“These are some of the best boots money can buy,” Ray said. He planned to do a ton of hiking. “I’m sure they’ll be great.”

“Just hurry the fuck up, would you? I have places I need to be.”

“No you don’t,” Mrs. Bennett said.

“Maybe I don’t, but that doesn’t mean I want to be standing around here all day waiting for the likes of him to buy his brie and sweeties. Those American shite kickers won’t help you on Jura, Chappie.”

“I’m afraid he’th right, Mr. Welter. The mud really ith extraordinary here. I do recommend thome wellieth.”

“They’re French I’ll have you know, not American,” Ray said. He heard himself playing along with Pitcairn’s games.

“I do hope you’ve brought a thatellite phone in cathe of an emergenthy.”

“No, I didn’t. That would’ve been smart.”

“If you do encounter a problem, there’th a thettlement up the road from Barnhill. Thomeone there can help you, I’m thure.”

“Aye, Chappie, go see Mr. Harris. He’s the real friendly sort and loves company.”

“Don’t lithen to him, Mr. Welter. Mr. Harrith preferth to keep to himthelf, but Mith Wayward ith quite charming.”

“That old witch? Stay well clear of her. I’m sure he’ll be fine, Mrs. Bennett. Won’t you, Chappie? Now hurry the fuck up.”

Hundreds of pounds’ worth of food and supplies formed a pyramid in the front of the shop. He went over the countless mental lists, yet knew he was forgetting something. He was always forgetting something. He bought a mixed case of scotch — different ages and strengths — and made arrangements for the distillery to deliver a fresh supply on the first day of every month. His plan was to read Orwell and drink himself silly.

Pitcairn watched from the doorway while Ray carried all the boxes to the truck. The rain fell harder than it had the day before; everything got wet before he could get it onto the flatbed.

“Thank you, Mrs. Bennett.”

“Tho long, Mr. Welter.”

Pitcairn climbed into the cab and started the engine, which made a horrible grinding noise that the devastating volume of the bagpipe cassette couldn’t overpower. Exhaust formed a cloud over Ray’s head. He already detested this man in a way he had never detested anyone before, except for maybe that fat piece of shit Walter Pentode. As with Pentode, however, he recognized the need to keep relations cordial, which was to say phony. He climbed into the passenger seat and the truck lunged into gear. “Truck’s not sounding so hot,” he said.

“And what do you know about it, Chappie? I suppose you include auto mechanic among your infinite talents?”

“I don’t know a thing about cars, but I do know that your truck sounds like it’s on the brink of death.”

“I don’t see how it’s any concern of yours.”

“Only until you get me to Barnhill.”

“Only until you get me to Barnhill. I’ll get you to your precious Barnhill, Chappie, don’t you worry. I want you as far away as possible.”

Driving on the wrong side of the road didn’t bother Ray this time because there was only one lane. If someone came from the other direction he would have to pull to the shoulder to let Pitcairn pass. It was tough to see much of the scenery through the mist. In his exhaustion, it felt like driving through the world’s longest car wash. The road followed the coastline north, over stony hills and glens, through small thickets of dense forest and across bog lands and rickety bridges. The road doglegged through the Ardlussa estate, a holdover from a previous and wealthier era. The manor house looked like the set of an old, black-and-white murder mystery. Now it was advertised online as a bed-and-breakfast.

The truck rocked and creaked like a wooden ship on stormy seas. Pitcairn yanked the wheel back and forth in what appeared to be a deliberate effort to smash into every pothole in the road. He grunted each time he hit one. They crossed vast stretches of desolate moorland and cut through groves of woodland straight out of the grimmest fairy tales. Ray’s stomach bounced inside his abdomen. Acid rose in his chest. The unsecured boxes knocked against each other on the back of the truck — and after twenty minutes, the road ended. A painted sign indicated that cars weren’t permitted any farther, but Pitcairn kept going.

“Is this legal?”

“That’s just a warning for the bloody tourists. I’m sick and tired of towing out those ungrateful arseholes.”

They continued on what appeared to be a rutted goat track with a median of waist-high weeds that followed on a ridge above the water. Across the Sound of Jura, not quite visible through the rain, the Scottish mainland beckoned with all the conveniences Ray had left behind. His lower back throbbed, his stomach waged war with his nervous system, the pipes — the fucking pipes — screeched at him from the speakers like a state-fair show pig headed to the slaughter, but the little scenery the mist didn’t hide was dreamlike. The motion of the truck allowed his hangover to gain momentum in the pit of his roiling belly.

“How much farther is it?”

“Almost there now, Chappie, and I’ll be done with you and you’ll see what you got your sorry self into. I bet Fuller twenty quid you’ll come crawling back to the hotel before the full moon.”

“The smart money’s on Fuller,” Ray said.

Pitcairn hit a hole as wide around as his tires. “Fuck! I know for a fact that some of these are so deep they’ll take you all the way down to Australia.”

“Stop the car,” Ray said. He hoped, one last time, to lighten the mood and improve relations before they got any worse. Maybe he could establish some kind of rapport with Pitcairn. It would be a mistake to make enemies on an island this small, particularly dangerous ones. “I could go for some grilled shrimp on the barbie.”

“I bet you could, Chappie. I don’t go for all that foreign shite myself. We had some of that Chinese ping-pang ching-chong shite in Glasgow years ago around the time of my boy’s wedding. The old lady wanted to try it. I don’t know why I agreed. ‘Those chinkies will eat dogs,’ I told her. It’s true.”

“It’s hard to imagine that you were ever married.”

“What did you think, that Molly came in the post? That I bought her from Mrs. Bennett? Fucking hell,” he said. The front wheel bounded out of another hole. “They almost caught us that time, Chappie. ‘You never know what they’re feeding you,’ I told the missus. I asked the waiter, ‘Is there dog in here?’ I did, I tell you. She’s dead six years now bless her soul.”

“Molly seems like a very bright girl.”

“Aye, and that’s precisely what worries me, Chappie. She’ll want to get off of Jura one of these days. You’re to stay well clear of her, you understand?”

“You have my word.”

“Your word, huh? And what’s that worth coming from a man who tricks people into buying shite they bloody well can’t afford. Don’t look so surprised. We can read on Jura, Chappie. As soon as the rental agent rang up Mrs. Bennett, she and Mrs. Campbell learned everything we needed to know about you and your sport utility vehicles.”

“I’m glad to hear I was able to provide you with so much entertainment,” he said.

They reached a bend in the track and Barnhill came into view. It was glorious. The size of the house might have justified the rental price. Even painted brilliant white, it did not in any way disrupt the natural splendor of the rolling hills and exposed rock faces, but instead blended in among the curvatures of the ground. It looked cozy.

“I’m glad that you’ll be all the way the fuck up here. What were you thinking?”

It would be an eight-hour walk back to The Stores for any additional supplies.

“I’m thinking I’m home,” Ray said.

A trail led down a little embankment to the house, which sat nestled in a pocket of lower ground between the ridge and a series of hills along the shoreline. The structure had been built on a protrusion into the Sound of Jura, and water surrounded it on three sides; the property included a two-story house with a long garage and a set of stables extending out back to form a U. The hills protected the house from the direct blast of gales from the coast, and a rustic stone wall at the base of the hills appeared to run the entire length of the island. There were no other dwellings in sight. His only neighbors were the countless sheep whose wet wool floated in puffy clouds over the mud. Jura had more of them than the nighttime sky had stars — there had to be hundreds of them clustering in packs large and small.

The front door was on the south side of the property. Ray carried two boxes of supplies down to the stoop before it occurred to him that he didn’t have a key. That was what he had been forgetting. Goddamn it.

Pitcairn’s truck sat idling at the road, the bagpiper wheezing away, and Ray had to march up there and ask him for a ride all the way back to Craighouse. How could he have been so stupid? Did Pitcairn know he had forgotten it? He had brought Ray all the way up here just so he could gloat. He could already hear it: Not so smart now, Chappie, are you? He closed his eyes, took a deep breath. Pitcairn was watching him, and any second now he would lean on the horn.

Ray stood at the door, on the very threshold, but he had to turn around. That had been the story of his life. Out of desperation, he tried the knob — and it turned. The door pushed open and led to a small mudroom. The smell of mildew and garbage punched him in the gut. He put off touring the premises and instead made several trips back up to the truck, where Pitcairn sat smoking a cigarette and reading his newspaper. The boxes of supplies filled the small mudroom and half of the foyer. The whole house stank. After Ray had carried the last of his things inside, he leaned out the door and waved goodbye to Pitcairn, who rolled down his window and whistled. “What do you think you’re doing, Chappie?” he yelled.

Ray walked halfway to the truck. “I’m moving in. Why, what do you think I’m doing?”

“You owe me twenty-five quid for the ride, yesterday and today. Do you imagine that I drove all the way the fuck up here for a joyride?”

“Oh of course,” Ray said. “I owe you twenty-five pounds and you owe me a hundred something for the bar tab last night. We’ll call it an even hundred. So that’s seventy-five pounds you owe me, in fact.”

“Now, Chappie, we talked about that.”

“We talked about that,” Ray said, mimicking Pitcairn’s brogue. “Thanks for the ride — let’s call it even.”

“Even? The next time you need help,” Pitcairn said, rolling up the window, “don’t come crying to me. I’ll expect you tomorrow down at the lounge. ‘Oh I miss my soda pop and telly programs, boo hoo.’ ” He turned the truck around and drove off, kicking up a rainbow of mud. He left a cloud of noxious exhaust behind. The bagpipes died a slow and painful death until, like that, Ray was alone. The wind stirred the trees. The water splashed gently against the rocks down at the water. There existed no human noise whatsoever. Unseen birds welcomed him from the hedges. Wind rippled in waves through the high grasses. The wet peat sucked at the treads of his boots as he fled out of the rain and into George Orwell’s house.

A TRULY MONUMENTAL ADVERTISING campaign could be a work of public performance art, one that could make an ungodly profit if the advertisers learned to put — or learned to pretend to put — the once-private desires of the proles (that was, the consumers) ahead of those of Big Brother (the corporate overlords who hired them). Ray wanted to exploit the proles’ false sense of freedom; he would reach out to consumers’ greatest aspirational self-images confident in knowing that people purchased things not for who they were but for who they wanted to be.

The idea behind his secret campaign wasn’t all that complicated. Contemporary consumers believed that they wanted to be free of corporate manipulation and free of subservience to Big Brother. The average American consumer spent enormous amounts of money in the effort to appear anticonsumerist. Ray had done the same thing for years.

As an experiment, he crafted an anticorporate message and campaign for a real American corporation. Just for laughs, he chose a particular model of military-grade SUV that had been introduced to the public marketplace a decade prior. After the initial novelty had worn off the sales figures plummeted due to a combination of abysmal gas mileage and skyrocketing petroleum costs. Out of boredom, Ray devised the method that would — on paper — make those trucks the most desirable vehicles on the road even amid a global oil crisis and during an era dedicated to environmental sustainability. It was meant to be theoretical.

As the intellectual property of Logos, his project didn’t belong to him. He kept it a secret up until the day that Bud sent a company-wide email announcing that they had formed a strategic partnership with the very same manufacturer of the very same military-grade SUVs. Ray read the email three times: Bud would soon begin building a team to interface with the automaker and better enable it to reposition its brand image amid a global marketplace advancing toward greater ecological awareness. Ray leapt from his cubicle.

Being named the account director for a domestic SUV company was a logical step in Bud’s career. He had a cell phone pinched between his face and shoulder while he pecked at a keyboard. “Two fifty a barrel,” he told the caller. “Yeah … I don’t know … Either the Persian Gulf or the Gulf of Mexico, I forget which — same difference … Our projections have it at three hundred by the end of the decade … Yes, this decade. That’s why the small part of Detroit that isn’t already boarded up is shitting itself right now. For our purposes, more expensive is better.”

Ray tiptoed in. Every footstep required concentration. Bud lifted his chin at him as if to say, What do you want? Ray thought about turning around and walking out. He could forget about his efforts to sell a shitload of SUVs and go back to hiding in his cubicle and spend the rest of his life rewriting the same three goddamn advertisements … or he could find out if his theories would work in real life. He handed Bud an unlabeled DVD.

“Jürgen, I’m telling you we’ll take care of it,” Bud told the telephone. “You won’t regret it … Yes … Yes.” He cupped his palm over the receiver. “What is this? I don’t have time for games, Man Ray.”

Ray slid the disc into one of the computers on his desk and the TV monitors on the wall went blank. The sound of a truck engine filled the room. A speck appeared at a distant horizon on both screens. The image grew larger until it became one of the SUVs that Logos was now partnered with. The truck, its engine roaring with thirst, sped toward the camera as if to mow the viewer down, then it skidded to a halt and filled the screen. A vandal had carved two words into the door as if with a key: “SUV Hogg.”

“Let me call you back,” Bud said. He sent his phone skidding across the papers on his desk. “What the fuck is this?”

“It’s our campaign.”

“Close the door. We don’t do campaigns, Ray. We establish strategic partnerships and provide market-driven solutions.”

“It’s our new strategic partnership. Scroll over the truck. It’s all there.” Words popped out from the hood, from the roof and trunk, from the tires. Clicking on them led to page after page about the proud tradition of petroleum production in American history. It was all very patriotic. Bud’s cell phone rang but he ignored it. Ray had earned himself two minutes to make his pitch. “The environment-friendly angle is a mistake,” he said.

Bud looked baffled. “A mistake? The contract it took me nine fucking months to procure is a mistake?” His landline rang. He answered both phones and placed them next to each other on the desk so the callers could talk to each other.

“Nothing we do,” Ray said, “will convince women or hippies to buy these trucks. Look at where the market’s headed. We need to help the automaker reassess the brand’s goals and attack a core audience. Men who buy SUVs don’t care about the environment or else they wouldn’t buy SUVs in the first place. My campaign — sorry, my market-driven solution — is about defiance.”

“Defiance.”

“Screw the environment.”

“Screw the environment? That’s your idea? How long have you been working on this?”

“You’re always preaching about interactivity. What’s more interactive than vandalizing your own truck?”

Bud hung up the two phones. “How did you know we’d get this account?”

“I didn’t.”

“So you spent, what, a month putting this together? Even if it was on your own time, you do understand that it’s the exact fucksticking opposite of the direction I agreed upon with the client?”

“Give them the DVD. I have a whole platform developed. You’ve said it yourself that the thirty-second ad is dead, right? So we’ll go post-media with this. We’ll go post-post media. I’ll put it this way: when’s the last time you took the L and someone wasn’t having a loud personal conversation on his cell phone? Everyone hates that guy, right? But what I have in mind will use the disintegration of public and private space to our advantage. We’re going to get twenty of these things—”

“Twenty of what?”

“These SUVs. We get as many as we can and vandalize them.”

“Vandalize them?”

“Yes.”

“To say ‘SUV Hog’?”

“Two g’s. We’ll copyright it immediately.”

“Are you fucking retarded?”

“Every couple weeks we’ll scrape ‘SUV Hogg’ into a truck and park it at that week’s hot place. Or outside a stadium before a playoff game.”

“You’re suggesting that people will buy SUVs because they’re getting keyed? Do you appreciate how stupid you sound?”

“It will work.”

“No offense, but you’re a fucking asshole.”

“Think about it for a sec. People will notice that all these trucks are getting vandalized, right? We’ll make it look like an organized grassroots effort by some smelly activists and it will get covered on every blog in the city. Think of the buzz,” Ray said. He was getting worked up. “Once some imaginary granola-eating pinkos get blamed, buying one of these things will become an act of defiance. Real men are free to waste as much fossil fuel as they want without big government or some hippies telling them what to do.”

“Screw the environment?”

“It’s a matter of synchronizing the doublespeak message with the new media at our disposal. We can even arrange it ahead of time for the dealerships to provide free paint touch-ups if the truck owners want them — which they won’t.”

His two minutes expired.

“SUV Hogg. That’s not it exactly, but let me give it some thought. I’ll run it upstairs. Have you shown this to anybody else?”

“No, I—”

“Don’t. You’re a strange motherfucker, Sugar Ray.”

Four days later, stacks of fresh nondisclosure forms landed on every chair in the building. Bud got the board’s permission to name Ray the assistant account director for what would become the Oil Hogg initiative. It was a huge step up in the world. He even got his very own office. At the end of the day Bud and the rest of the team were waiting for him when he arrived downstairs in the parking garage. His car had disappeared from its usual spot. In its place stood a hulking SUV — a bonus for generating the idea. With some ceremony, the CEO herself handed him the keys, which he used to scrape “Oil Hogg” into the paint.

The team kicked the project off by vandalizing the hood or door or rear panel of twenty-four SUVs and then parking them outside Chicago’s most popular restaurants and tourist spots. Over the days that followed, a small cadre of sworn-to-secrecy interns posted grainy camera phone images on every social-media platform. The reaction came instantaneously. Hundreds of people liked and re-posted the images; they crowed with delight about the comeuppance of those arrogant, petroleum-guzzling bullies who clogged the roads with their behemoth machines.

No one expected the copycat vandalism that followed. Through the winter, the defacement of SUVs took on its own momentum when students, housewives, and everyday proles got in on the action and started scraping up strangers’ vehicles. A wave of low-stakes eco-terrorism washed over Chicago and unwittingly spread the Oil Hogg branding message.

Then Ray’s plan began in earnest. He had the interns launch the counter-initiative. They started on AM radio, calling in to right-wing talk shows to say how proud they were of being decent, law-abiding Americans and hence free to despoil the environment any way they damn well pleased. “Longtime listener, first time caller,” an intern said live on the air from Bud’s office. “I’m proud to be an Oil Hogg.”

Supporters called in to echo his sentiments. The new narrative took shape online and on the airwaves, one extolling the red-meat joy of driving big trucks. The rhetoric of the new blogs and memes equated gasoline usage with being a real American. Hundreds of SUV owners whose vehicles had not been vandalized soon did it themselves. Sales boomed citywide and in the northern half of the state. The auto dealers couldn’t keep them on the lot. The earnings reports erased any doubt on the part of the Logos board about Ray’s unconventional methods.

The fun couldn’t last, however. Someone — most likely an intern — wrote an anonymous, tell-all blog post. Chicago’s free weekly ran a cover story about car dealerships promoting fake grassroots environmentalist vandalism as a way to market more trucks, and that led to a local news segment in which a trench-coated correspondent stood in front of the Logos office and scratched the Greek letters of the company sign with a key.

There were lawsuits and counter-suits, governmental fines and complaints from a union claiming to represent automobile detailers. The Justice Department was snooping around. To avoid litigation from the truck buyers stupid enough to key their own goddamn vehicles, the manufacturer confessed to the shenanigans and offered to pay for all the paint touch-ups.

The Logos Print Team designed full-page mea culpa advertisements for the region’s largest remaining newspapers. The final leg of the campaign featured fat actors portraying stereotypical pinstriped, cigar-chomping auto executives from Detroit getting busted for vandalizing their own trucks. Their buffoonish antics were detailed in an array of short advertorial webisodes, gamified apps, and social-network widgets. Protestors on both sides of the debate loved the images of fat, rich people getting marched off to jail.

One of the interns, a young woman named Flora, repurposed some Oil Hogg print ads for a series of street-art stencils and used them to deface half of the abandoned buildings in downtown Chicago. Her vandalism wasn’t officially approved by Logos, but it wasn’t condemned either. She garnered a great deal of attention around the office and did brilliant work despite her moral objections. In a company-wide email, she had called Ray’s new step in the Oil Hogg initiative “morally reprehensible” and “pure concentrated evil, but ingenious.” Ray saved the email.

By making fun of themselves, the SUV manufacturers turned the scandal into victory and the advertising awards poured in. Local sales records were shattered as consumers rallied around the brand. It was rumored that a Chinese conglomerate wanted to import the SUVs and was petitioning the US government for some revisions to an international trade agreement. In the fiscal quarter that followed, the SUV out-performed hybrids three to one in the greater Chicago market. Dealers presold the trucks months in advance of their production and they continued to get vandalized as fast as they could escape the Michigan assembly lines. More shifts were added at the factories and the creation of so many new jobs led to significant press coverage about the pending renewal of Detroit — and it was all thanks to him.

RAY DOZED OFF TO the sound of rain knocking at the windows. The wind eventually woke him and then punctuated eight and a half hours of eyes-wide-open insomnia before it yielded to a series of early morning dreams about every manner of natural and unnatural disaster. He half heard the sitting-room chair shaking and groaning beneath him while he recoiled from the sounds of automobile accidents, plane crashes, and crumbling skyscrapers. From the sickening crunch of metal against metal, the drip drip drop of broken sewer lines erupting into fountains of diarrheal waste. Naked bodies fueled a mile-high bonfire. He awoke disoriented and with the odors of kerosene and burning human flesh still in his nose. The room was strangely bright. It took a minute to figure out where he was. Outside, the sun shined upon Barnhill’s back garden.

The sun!

He opened the window to welcome the warm air in, but the smoky smell from his dream didn’t dissipate. Something was on fire.

A dozen possibilities ran through his mind: he had forgotten to blow out a candle and it had ignited the spilled whisky on the counter. Or a red ember had flown up the chimney and torched the bushes outside. A milk cow had kicked over a lantern. Whatever had started it, the odor was unmistakable. He was going to be responsible for burning down George Orwell’s house.

The smell of burning grease originated in the kitchen. He ran through the dining room with his socked feet sliding on the wooden floor. There were no signs yet of smoke, but the fire crackled and sizzled. Water. He needed a bucket of water. No! Not for a grease fire. For a grease fire, he needed … what? Baking soda? The odor grew stronger, more pungent. That pile of charcoaled bodies flickered again through his mind. If he didn’t know better he would’ve sworn that it smelled exactly like—

“Coffee’s on,” Molly said. She stood at the sink looking out the window and watching the sheep amble around the sunny garden. Their bells usually relaxed Ray, but this morning they sounded like a fleet of screaming fire trucks careening through the yard. The light pounded into his eyes. “Mind you, I can’t imagine how you Yanks drink this stuff.”

“What are you doing here?”

“What does it look like?” Her voice cracked the tiniest bit. “I’m making breakfast. I hope you don’t mind,” she said, and turned to face him.

It was called a black eye, but her face appeared more orange and purple: a horrendous masterpiece of secondary colors. A strawberry-sized lump protruded from her forehead.

“Would you mind if I stayed here for a little while?” she asked.

“Sure, definitely. I mean — no. I don’t mind.”

If he wanted to be honest with himself, Ray would have admitted that his very first thought was about the loss of his solitude. The idea of looking after an abused teenager didn’t carry much appeal considering that her murderous dad would be looking for her any minute, but under no circumstances could he turn away a girl who was getting beat up at home. “Does your father know you’re here?”

“You’re having a laugh, right? He was out drinking all night, so I made a break for it.”

“How’d you get all the way up here?”

“On my mountain bike. I brought as much as I could carry.”

“I’m not sure this is a great idea, but you can make yourself one hundred percent at home,” he said. “Take the room upstairs at—”

“At the end of the hall, aye. My things are already up there. You were still sleeping and, I should add, you snore like a beast. Now have some of this coffee before it gets cold. It’s better than that instant shite you’ve been drinking, and far tastier than Fuller’s. I swear he makes it that way on purpose.”

She almost smiled.

Sure enough, it was the best coffee Ray had tasted since leaving Chicago. Over his own moans of pleasure, he heard a sound like the release of springs in a metal can. Two pieces of white bread leapt from the toaster and poked their crusty heads out as if to see their shadows and determine how much longer he had to wait for a decent meal. She must have brought some food with her.

“How did you do that?” he asked.

“I pushed this lever down.”

“No, how did you turn on the electricity?”

“I switched on the generator out the back, dummy.”

“There’s a generator?”

“One of those silent ones at that. It’s in the stables. Are you telling me you’ve lived in this house for a month without electricity or gas? You didn’t notice the big, white propane tank outside?”

He had noticed it, sure, but it never occurred to him that it might work.

“You haven’t had any hot water?”

“I heated some pots and pans up a few times in the fireplace.”

“Are you positively deranged?”

He gestured toward her face. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.

“About the hot water?”

“About your eye.”

She sized him up for a moment. “No, not really. Also, and I don’t mean to be insensitive or in any way appear less than grateful for your hospitality, but could I trouble you to put on some trousers?”

Oh hell.

He was wearing only a pair of boxers and black dress socks with gold toes. Cold pinpricks dotted his arms and legs. At least he wasn’t completely naked this time.

Ray went upstairs to put on some clean-ish jeans and a black “Oil Hogg” T-shirt. Living with a female again would take some getting used to. Wearing pants. No more pissing out back in the garden. No more drying his naked body by the fire.

Molly had breakfast ready by the time he got downstairs again: full Scottish, minus the haggis. The blazing sunlight illuminated the kitchen but also exposed a layer of grime on the counters and in the sink. He made the decision to ignore it. They sat and without delay Molly tore in to her food. Bacon, eggs, toast, tomatoes. Real coffee. She shoveled it all in with two hands. She slurped at her tea and belched into the crook of her elbow. “Have some tomato,” she said, sending bits of egg hurtling onto his shirt. Ray could’ve gone on eating for days, except that she sucked up everything in sight before he could get his fill. He would need to be quicker. Crumbs stuck to her cheek and wouldn’t budge even when she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, the fingers of which still grasped a triangle of toasted and buttered and jellied bread. She looked like a half-domesticated animal set loose on a feeding trough. Her gluttony was mesmerizing, yet also endearing. It was sweet in a strange and disgusting way. He envied her. She appeared so … healthy.

After she finished every morsel on her plate and then on his, she leaned back in her chair. “Okay, then,” she said. “A few ground rules. In exchange for the use of the room upstairs, I will do the cooking.”

She had clearly been rehearsing this conversation. “Terrific,” Ray said.

“Second, I will stay out of your way. I don’t want to interfere with your work and I don’t want you interfering with mine.”

“Fair enough,” he told her. Everything was happening so fast: in the span of twenty minutes he had gone from hermit to chaperone for an abused teenager. Also, what work could a seventeen-year-old girl have at a place like Barnhill?

“Most importantly, and I wouldn’t be here if I thought this would be an issue, but I want to make it clear that nothing is going to happen between us. Our relationship will be purely, strictly, and chastely platonic. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“You promise?”

“You have my solemn oath. Nothing will happen. No thing.”

She shook his hand with much ado, leaving a globule of jelly on it. “Now, while you do the washing up, I’m going to unpack my things. We’ll reconvene for lunch. Until then, I will appreciate very much having some privacy. Also, you stink — take a bath. Mind you, I do like your beard.”

The possibility of a physical relationship with Molly hadn’t even occurred to him. It wasn’t even within the realm of possibility. “Sure,” he said. “You’ll have all the privacy your heart desires. Can I help with your bags?”

“No, but you could get rid of the dead fox at the front door. You need to bury it or it will attract carrion and they attack the lambs.”

Indeed, another animal sat prostrate and disemboweled at the doorstep, surrounded by a miniature Stonehenge of gooey fur. The stench was unbearable. He squinted at it in the sun. A pair of crows was enjoying a feast and they dared him to chase them away. “Yah!” he said and stomped a foot in their general direction. They looked at him with disdain then continued to peck and pull at their brunch. He went to the garage to fetch the shovel. The generator now powering the house purred almost inaudibly, much unlike the petroleum-spewing models he would see on the neighbors’ farms as a kid or powering gigantic TVs and PA systems at Saturday tailgate parties.

Shovel in hand, he scraped the mess into a burlap sack and carried it to the garden, where he chose a dead tree as a grave marker. The blade of the shovel carved cleanly through the layer of heather and into the soft, peaty soil, but the job would still take half an hour. He got to digging. Molly’s uninvited presence got him thinking about Flora and the way his time in Chicago had ended. Flora had asked him once what he feared most and since then he had given the question a great deal of thought. Not rats. Not bad gin. He feared that he would never regain the certainty he had possessed when first reading Orwell.

He brushed the sweat from his forehead and surveyed the new grave. It was a beautiful thing to be in Scotland and to dig a hole on a sunny day. He kicked the sack into the hole and leaned on the handle of the shovel to catch his breath. His fingers grew calloused, but it was strange how easily he could slip off his wedding ring. Without giving it much further thought, he dropped it on top of the burlap sack and threw a pile of black dirt on top until the island itself swallowed the band of gold. That was when he caught Molly watching him from an upstairs window. He smiled at her, but the curtain flittered closed. Ray got down on the ground and reached for the ring. The putrid odor rose to greet him. The burlap squished beneath his fingers. He thought about putting it back on, but allowed the fox to carry it with him into the next world.

He ruled out searching for the other dead animals he had tossed into the bushes and refilled the hole and stowed the shovel back in the garage. The muscles in his shoulders ached and he wanted nothing more than to take a hot bath, but Molly had beaten him to it. She was in the bathroom singing something like a lullaby or children’s rhyme, albeit a profane one. He took the opportunity to poke his head into what had become her bedroom. The door creaked open.

Three folding easels stood sentry in a semicircle facing the northern window. A wooden bucket from the garage held a bouquet of paintbrushes and palette knives. White sheets covered the three paintings in progress. The bath was still running, so he tiptoed in and lifted the corner of one.

The painting was a self-portrait, but her hands and feet had yet to be painted. She was completely nude, her belly and big boobs protruding, and looking at the viewer as if to say, This is who I am. Take it or leave it. She had laid herself bare and in vivid detail. It was beautiful — she was an amazing painter. He couldn’t stop staring. Something operating inside his respiratory system came to a halt. His heart was no longer beating. Then the bath water stopped.

Ray covered the painting again and crept back into the hallway. The floorboards whined beneath his feet. Molly surely knew what he was up to. She would be livid. Before she could emerge, he fled to his room and closed the door. The image of Molly had imprinted itself onto his imagination. Her gaze challenged him to look away, but he didn’t want to.

In the painting, she had given herself a black eye.

During the days that followed they settled into a pleasant enough routine. Each morning after breakfast they retired to their respective rooms so that Molly could paint and he could read. She asked him a few times about his obsession with Nineteen Eighty-Four, and he was unable to come up with a sensible explanation. It had something to do with the fact that Winston Smith had suffered every manner of torture before he surrendered to the system. Big Brother threatened him with starving rats in a cage they placed over his head. The fear got to be too much and by the end he stopped rebelling. Winston came to love his oppressor and in doing so found some semblance of contentment.

Painting was different from reading in that there was only so much Molly could accomplish each day before she needed to stop and let the oils dry. She got restless when cooped up in the house too long. She spent hours sunbathing nude in the rear garden, and he tried not to notice.

Molly had been at Barnhill for over a week when, one afternoon, she barged into Ray’s room without knocking and interrupted his reading. “Why are you indoors on a day this lovely?” she asked.

“You can see that I’m reading.”

“I’m bored. Let’s take a walk. I need to get out.”

“So get out!” he said, but was already putting his bookmark in place.

“I’ll pack a lunch.”

It did look like a perfect day and with the blisters subsiding he was long overdue for some sightseeing. He put on a pair of cargo shorts and tall, burr-resistant socks. Molly was in the mudroom shoving two stained and threadbare mackintoshes into a military surplus backpack. “Raincoats?” he asked. “A little overprotective, aren’t we?”

“I’m not going to argue with you,” she said. She removed one of the coats and placed it back on its hook. “Mind you, I really don’t care if you get drenched.”

Ray opened the door to peek outside. Sunlight tickled the endless field of pink rhododendrons. Bees buzzed in the warm afternoon air. The sheep suffered in their winter coats. He looked at Molly, then at the cloudless sky, then at Molly again.

“Who are you going to believe?” she asked. “Me or your own lying eyes? It is going to piss down in, oh, three quarters of an hour.”

“Fine,” he said. No need to stir up an argument. “Give me that raincoat. Anything else? Maybe some scuba gear?”

She removed the mac from the hook again, crammed it into the backpack, and handed him the whole thing. “The next time you’re at The Stores, pick yourself up a decent pair of wellies. I threw away those ugly boots of yours.”

Sure enough, his boots were missing from the mudroom. “What do you mean you threw them away? Those were very expensive!”

“I put them in the bin. They’re shite at any stupid price. They might be right for the grueling conditions of inner city Chicago, but on Jura they’re as useful as nail polish on a snake.”

“What am I supposed to wear in the meantime?”

“What am I supposed to wear in the meantime? Jesus, do you listen to yourself? It’s not my problem — your plimsolls, I suppose.” He looked at her blankly. “Trainers? Sneakers?”

“I have a better idea,” Ray said.

The garbage pail at the back of the house overflowed with over a month’s worth of refuse. He needed to take it to the dump somehow. He retrieved his boots from the muck.

As much as he wanted to climb the Paps, they were way too far away to reach in one afternoon. They headed in the opposite direction, up toward Kinuachdrach. The air was aromatic with sage and wildflowers and hay. They walked in silence, but it became clear that Molly had something to get off her chest. He didn’t push it.

For the first time in months, his muscles seemed to be loosening. Was this what it meant to relax? It had been a long, long time. Every so often he and Helen used to get in the truck and drive up to the woods in northern Illinois or Wisconsin. They could walk for long, tranquil hours. Being on Jura brought back some of that joy, but with Molly there existed a different and tenser variety of shared silence.

After something like forty minutes or an hour, a damp breeze kicked up. He really had gained a new sense of time. His body felt more responsive to the natural environment than to the lumbering journey of an hour hand around the face of a wristwatch. The wind sent the grasses rippling in long waves. The cool air mitigated the heat beating down on his face and the part of his neck not covered by his beard, which had again assumed an unruly life of its own. Molly had remarked that he looked like a second-rate hippie guru capable of mass murder or a millionaire jam-band guitarist trying to resemble his unwashed fan base.

They arrived in Kinuachdrach and he knocked on Miriam’s door, but she didn’t answer. A cat stirred in the window and the dog growled at them from its barbed-wire cage. “Too bad she’s not in,” Molly said. “She bakes the best scones in Scotland.”

The pickup truck full of pig shit was parked next to another house, one crumbling and half boarded up. “Who lives there?” Ray asked.

“That’s Mr. Harris. He keeps to himself.”

“He gave me a ride to Barnhill the other day.”

“Are you having a laugh?”

“He said he knew who I was.”

“He stops by The Stores and even the lounge from time to time, but hasn’t spoken more than a sentence to anyone in two years. We’re best to leave him alone.”

They followed the path up to a summit, from where they could see the mainland and make out several of the neighboring islands. It was Ray’s first real view of his surroundings. A lighthouse or bunker of some sort stood vigil on one of the islands. The shadows of clouds spotted the land with fast-moving shapes. He stood at the centermost point of the entire universe and understood, finally, that he was on the Isle of Jura, that his physical experience of the natural surroundings and his mental image of the map were one and the same. He stayed put for a moment while Molly marched ahead; then he jogged to catch up. Beyond the summit, a path plummeted toward a gulf where she pointed to something in the water. “See that?” she asked.

A series of wooden docks housed some small boats, which looked perfect for fishing or even for a short jaunt over to the mainland. “Not really.”

“See where the water’s a bit darker? That’s the Corryvreckan.”

They went down to the quay and sat with their legs hanging over the water. Gigantic seabirds screeched at them and broke the surface of the water in perilous dives. Ray wanted to ask Molly a million questions — about Jura, about who might still remember Orwell, about her black eye most of all. They watched the sunlight sparkle on the water until the smell of the air changed and became almost metallic. Molly pulled a raincoat from the backpack. She put it on, but it was several sizes too large so she had to roll up the sleeves. When she stood it hung to her knees like a dress. He pulled the other jacket on. It felt like wearing a second skin of plastic wrap. Sweat poured into his eyes when he sat again.

The rain came at once and from nowhere. Every drop sought his attention. The sky still teased them with sapphirine clarity, but rain fell like it wanted to submerge the island again until the tips of the Paps protruded from the sea to form three smaller and even less populated islands. He thought that the weather would frighten Molly off, that she would turn around and return to Barnhill, but no. She stayed seated, impervious to the weather, watching the sound absorb the deluge until he couldn’t stand her silence any longer. “Is there something bothering you, Molly?” he asked. He was full of stupid questions.

“What could possibly bother me about spending my entire life trapped on a medieval island completely devoid of culture?”

He didn’t know what to say. He had felt the same way, at her age, about living in the Illinois cornfields, but there was no way to explain that. She would have to figure it all out on her own. “You’re only seventeen, and you’re probably not as trapped as you think. Your father — and I will grant you he is a raging asshole — in his own messed up way he has your best interests at heart. There’s no reason you’ll need to stay on Jura forever.”

“I knew you would take his side!”

“Here’s the thing,” Ray said, hoping that something helpful and encouraging would come to mind. He waited. “Thinking in terms of sides is never useful — there really aren’t any binary oppositions. Nothing is entirely black-and-white or good-and-bad.”

“That sounds to me like lame relativism.”

“Let’s go back,” he said. He needed nothing more than a tall glass of single malt to warm himself up with. They started the return trek to Barnhill. “It’s not relativism, it’s specificity. Every thing needs to be considered in itself instead of in relation to some false negation of it. Try to think of your situation from your father’s point of view. I’m not saying he’s right — I mean, look at your eye — but terms like right and wrong are beside the point sometimes.”

Their boots splashed in the mud. Ray’s toes grew wet and sent a cascade of prickles up his leg.

“Aye I get all that, but what if he doesn’t have my best interests at heart? I have every reason to believe he is a selfish arsehole who will do everything he can to satisfy his own needs. This island and our traditions are more important to him than I am, so where does that leave me?”

“It leaves you stuck on Jura, I guess, until you decide you’re ready for art school or whatever it is you want to do. As much as you want to moan and complain, I know that a part of you loves it here. A big part of you.”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t hate it too — you said so yourself.”

“Right, so tell me what you love about Jura.”

“The history, I guess. People have lived on this island since the Stone Age.”

“What else?”

“I don’t know. In many ways, this may be the strangest place on earth. When I leave — and I am going to leave — I’ll miss the eccentricity here. We get all the telly programs from London and America, but we’ve also managed to maintain a unique way of life. I do love that about this place, but I also hate it. Is that okay?”

“Definitely.”

They walked for another hour, long enough for the rain to stop and the sun to dry their hair and clothes. Wet blades of grass stuck to his soggy boots. Back at the house, they stood on the stoop. The stain of animal fluids hadn’t washed away in the rain. Molly took off her wellies and socks, but didn’t stop there. Just as Ray had done on several occasions, she unbuttoned her pants and climbed out of them. Her legs were pale but looked exercised and uncorrupted by age or high-fructose corn syrup. She removed her shirt and then her undershirt and bra. Ray stood transfixed. Although he did his damnedest not to notice, she had a beautiful body.

Molly raised her arms and stretched with a loud groan in the breeze, soaking the atmospheric conditions into her skin. Her white underpants were the only thing standing between this girl and the full frontal nudity of the painting upstairs. She was so comfortable, so at ease with herself: a living, breathing sheela na-gig. Her nakedness had nothing to do with him. It was like he wasn’t there, or like she didn’t care that he was. The self-assurance was wondrous. “I’m going to take a long bath,” she said, “then I’ll see about something to eat. I’m famished.”

The water started running upstairs. She was singing a song Ray recognized, but couldn’t make out. He poured a large dram — he didn’t notice the age — and drank it in one long go. As far as Molly was concerned, he was so old, or now so familiar, so beyond the realm of sexual desirability, that in her mind there was nothing unusual about stripping naked in his presence or sunbathing topless outside his window.

In the weeks that followed, they fell into the habit of picnicking at a different spot every day. He would bounce ideas about Orwell off Molly, and she would fill him in about the history of the island. They visited the sites of Jura’s Iron Age settlements and ancient battles. She taught him about the Viking blood feuds that spanned generations, pitted neighbor against neighbor, and still got voiced in the sternly worded letters to the editor of a newsletter over on Islay.

The more he heard about Jura’s history — true or not — and the more he saw of its natural splendor, the better he came to appreciate the hardships Orwell had experienced. Molly also got him up to speed on the marital, legal, and pharmaceutical problems besetting the entire population. They found traces of old footpaths on which their stravaigs, as Molly called their walks, grew longer and her stories wilder. One afternoon, they followed a deer trail off into the wild. “I had an interesting conversation with Farkas not too long ago,” Ray told her. “He wants me to believe that he’s a werewolf.”

“Are you suggesting he isn’t?” Molly asked.

“So everyone on Jura just plays along, is that it?”

“You still don’t understand the ways things are here, do you?”

“I like Farkas, don’t get me wrong, but he needs a good psychiatrist.”

“As opposed to a bad psychiatrist?”

“As opposed to being surrounded by people willing to play along with his delusions.”

“Now I understand that you’re the sophisticated advertising executive and we’re all a lot of backwards Diurachs, but can’t you even consider the possibility that he’s not delusional?”

“You want me to believe that Farkas is a werewolf?”

“No, but I do want you to believe that it might be possible.”

“Do you think I’d be allowed to join the next hunt?”

“So you can shoot Farkas?”

“It sounds too strange and wonderful to pass up.”

“It’s also barbaric. Did you know that the preparations begin months in advance? Everyone on the island is supposed to contribute to the feast, but the women aren’t even allowed to attend. I sneaked out there once to watch them. Luckily they didn’t shoot me.”

“What goes on? Is there really a wolf?”

“Mostly the men just let off a little steam. They build a bonfire and go off in small groups to follow each other around in the dark and piss in the bushes. It’s not as interesting as you’ve been led to believe.”

“What is interesting is that you think Farkas might really be a werewolf.”

“Well he’s very hairy.”

“I’ll grant you that. It’s hardly conclusive evidence, however. Do you think he gets hairier when he transforms? Is that even possible?”

“Aye, I see your point,” Molly said, “but it is true that when he was a wee baby he was left here by Gypsies.”

“Gypsies. Of course.”

“It’s true. Forty or fifty years ago, however old Farkas is, Mrs. Campbell found him on the front porch of the hotel. There was no note or any indication of where he came from, but back then there used to be a pack of Gypsies that came over from the Continent every seven years and camped out on the western side, where the caves are. I’ll take you there sometime. They would catch a ton of fish and lobster, kill some deer, poach a few sheep, then move on.”

She spoke with such conviction that Ray wanted to believe her. “You can’t be serious,” he said. They continued walking.

“They had been migrating back and forth across the Continent since World War II, until one year when Baby Farkas appeared at the hotel. After that, much to the collective relief of our more or less racist and intolerant population, they never returned. Mrs. Campbell says that he was covered in hair even as a wee baby. He looked like a teddy bear. That’s how we ended up with a lycanthropic distiller.”

“And Mrs. Campbell adopted him?”

“The whole island adopted him. As my da puts it, he was more like a pet than another child. We’re not exactly wealthy on Jura, at least no one was back then, so people shared the responsibility of raising him. He lived here and there. The story gets funny peculiar. It was around the time Farkas turned thirteen that sheep and cattle on the island started turning up slaughtered every so often.”

That did it. Ray couldn’t hide his disbelief any longer. “Now I know you’re messing with me.”

“It’s true, I swear to you. Even now when he drinks too much, which is, oh, every bloody day by my calculation — and you might know something about that yourself — whenever he has too much to drink he boasts that he’s responsible for killing all these animals. It’s like he’s proud of it. He gets quite wound up. That’s why he doesn’t join the hunting parties. Don’t laugh, Ray — I’m absolutely serious.”

“You’re as crazy as he is.”

“I know for a fact that he has been researching laser hair removal systems online.”

“How do you know that?”

“There are no secrets on Jura. That’s a big reason I can’t wait to leave.”

They reached the cylindrical tower where he had once stopped to attend to his blisters. It turned out to be a trig point, which, before the advent of global positioning satellites, was used for accurate surveying of the land. It felt reassuring that people had gotten along very well for thousands of years without electronic technology; the earth would continue to spin long after the digital revolution ended and civilization crumbled. They stopped for a bite to eat before turning around.

Molly had so many stories of hidden pirate treasure, arsonist rock stars, visiting authors staying in Craighouse on the government’s dime and causing veterinarian-summoning scandals with sheep. It was in those days of long walks out on the heather moors that the morass of his thinking showed the first clear signs of disentangling; those deep, mental knots started to unravel and Ray began to feel like his old, pre-Logos self again. He was able to concentrate on his reading for longer periods of time and some days Molly would have to physically drag him from his chair in order to point out another trail or beachhead or standing stone.

In the evenings, they would retreat to Barnhill tired and sunburned. She would bathe and then return to her painting. He would read until they both grew hungry, at which point she heated up various combinations from the dwindling supply of canned goods. After dinner, Ray would light a fire and sip on some scotch. With more food in his belly those days, the quantities of nighttime whisky didn’t affect him quite as badly. Most nights they traded stories about their childhoods or made them up entirely. Ray had been an astronaut and a professional llama wrangler. Molly was actually from Egypt and her real name was Queen Nothinginkhamun. His laughter returned — it sounded strange at first. Only once in a while did he pass out in a sitting-room chair, at which time Molly would help him up the stairs and dump him onto his mattress.

Ray was sound asleep one night when the bed began to shake. It felt like one of the rare earthquakes they would get back on the Illinois prairie. The room rumbled beneath him for four or five seconds and then stopped. A distant voice addressed him. “Would you wake up already?” it asked.

It sounded like Flora. No — it sounded like Molly. The room shook some more. Molly sat in her pajamas at the foot of his bed.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. A faint light in another part of the house bled through the door. He hoped he had clothes on under the sheets. “Are you okay?”

“Can I ask you a personal question?” she asked.

Ray sat up. “I don’t imagine I could stop you,” he said.

“Do you want to have sex with me?”

“What?”

“Do you want to have sex with me?”

“I heard you. Why would you ask me that? No!”

“Why not? Because I’m ugly?”

“No — you’re … you’re very pretty.”

“ ‘Pretty’ is a pretty vague word. Pretty bad. Pretty ugly. Pretty depressed. Not much of a compliment, is it?”

“You’re seventeen years old.”

“Almost eighteen. I’m not saying I want to have sex with you either — I don’t, I assure you — I’m just curious, you know, if there’s some kind of tension going here that I should be made aware of?”

“And you decided to wait until the middle of the night to ask about it?”

“What better time?”

“Don’t you worry your, uh, pretty little head. No, I don’t want to have sex with you.”

“You’re not in here at night having impure thoughts about me?”

“No!”

“I’m glad to hear it,” she said and lay down next to him on top of the bed. The blankets established a safe, cotton membrane between them. Her hair on the pillow smelled like wet paint. “I saw you bury your wedding ring in the backyard,” she said.

“That felt good, but it had nothing to do with you. How do I explain it? Coming to Jura has given me a new perspective. I can’t stand the idea of being fenced in anymore. Being trapped in a symmetrical grid of city blocks. That ring just felt constricting, I guess. I’m still technically married, at least for now. I’m waiting for the divorce papers to come through. That is if my wife’s lawyers can find me all the way up here.”

“Are you still in love with her?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“I want to know.”

“Why?”

“I just do.”

Wind battered at the windows. The sheep bells were unusually quiet out back. Ray pictured the sheep huddled together to wait out the night, to protect their young from whatever was leaving the dead animals at the door. The weakest and slowest among them wouldn’t make it. “I haven’t thought about Helen that way recently, no. I’ll never not love her, but I respect that she needs to move on and I guess I’ve realized that I do too.”

“Is that why you’re here?”

“In bed?”

“On Jura!”

“Can’t we talk about this in the morning?”

“Why are you so miserable?”

“I’m not miserable, I’m tired. You want to know? Okay, I don’t really blame her for divorcing me. I haven’t been a very good husband, and I think I’m in love with one of my former coworkers, or I was.”

“So that’s why you’re so miserable.”

“No. Okay, maybe. Yes. But I was miserable before that too.”

“You don’t have to be the same person here on Jura that you were in America,” Molly said. “You can be happy if you want to be.”

She kissed him on the side of his head and returned to her room. The lights in the house blinked out. Her paint smell lingered and he couldn’t get back to sleep. His mind whirred. He felt somewhat happy, which was really fucking remarkable, but there still existed a source of deep-in-his-bones dread: Molly’s father.

Gavin Pitcairn lurked in the back of Ray’s thoughts and kept him on constant alert. All the single malt in Scotland wouldn’t be enough to make him fully relax. It was only a matter of time before that flatbed came rumbling up the path.

HE BINOCULARED HIS EYES against the glass, but couldn’t see anyone inside. The shop was empty, the hanging labyrinth of clothes gone. Only a local realtor’s FOR SALE sign remained. He knocked a few times and then banged on the door with the butt of his fist. The counter and shelves and racks had been stripped bare. He took a step back. In addition to carrying his coffee-stained shirt, he had that fat asshole Pentode’s sports coat draped over his arm like a blanket. He planned to return it, though he would’ve preferred to tear it to ribbons and tie them to the nearest maypole.

The appointment with Helen was in a little bit. They had a lot to discuss. He would give her every opportunity to explain why Pentode’s coat was in his truck. He walked around the corner, pushing through the morning crowd. Scores of plastic trash cans, each with a street number painted in sloppy white letters, had spilled their garbage all over the narrow alley that ran behind the row of shops. The names of the stores appeared on the back doors, but he didn’t need the signs to find Kletzski’s Kleaners. Two dumpsters halfway down the block overflowed with clean clothes. Hundreds of the bags inhaled and exhaled in the wind. The bins seethed with plastic. Mrs. Kletzski had thrown everything away, the entire contents of her store. His beloved shirt was somewhere in there.

He turned his cell phone on to check the time. Bud had left four messages, but Ray would catch up with them when he returned to work. Other things occupied his mind. Despite everything that had happened — and everything that hadn’t happened — Ray still wanted Helen to let him move back in. He had made enough mistakes of his own and couldn’t hold her adultery against her. Still, the word sounded acidic and vile in his mind: adultery. In forty-five minutes he would make one final attempt at reconciliation. She had to let him come home.

Late commuters and early loiterers filled the sidewalk while the automobile traffic wore him down with a circus-orchestra repertoire of horns and sirens. It was sickening — physically sickening — that he needed an appointment to see his own wife. The weather, however, remained perfect, as if the clear sky above existed to spite the congestion around him. A half dozen new construction sites had appeared in the neighborhood since the weekend. The skyscraping windowpanes reflected a false, second sky adorned with video cameras that perched above every intersection. The authorities made no effort to conceal them. If anything, their ubiquity served as a threat, and a reminder that he lived within the confines of Total Empire, as horizon-to-horizon vast as language itself. Ray’s every step, every phone call, and every keystroke was recorded, his spending habits, downloads, and library rentals entered into electronic databases housed somewhere in vast server farms. The commercial entities, like Logos, headquartered in these buildings predicted his ideas before he even thought them. It was too much. He felt this close to losing his shit. The whole city conspired against him. Chicago had become a police state with no need for policemen. On the grid, under constant surveillance, every individual was Big Brother incarnate. That was true of him too — he was made to feel corrupted just by living his life. He had built his career by exploiting all these poor proles, and he couldn’t stop dwelling on those out-of-work assembly-liners up in Detroit. They were real people with real lives and families, and they were unemployed because of him. He couldn’t take it anymore.

The pedestrian sea parted, and from it a homeless man appeared wearing a full bridal gown and a frilly white veil. He carried a pile of plastic-wrapped designer clothes. Ray stopped to take a photo. “What, you never seen a dude in a dress before?” the man asked. He paraded past, the long train of his gown dragging coffee cups and debris behind him down the sidewalk.

The humanities building enjoyed a temporary stillness reminiscent of the atmospheric conditions that preceded a tornado siren. Classes were in session so the hallways were deserted save the stray bathroom-bound slacker. Fluorescent tube lights glared against the fishbowl exterior of the English office and the wall-mounted display cases half-empty with faculty publications. Ray stopped to use the men’s room and collect his thoughts.

The time had come for him to straighten himself out. The most wonderful moments of his life had been spent in Helen’s company, and he could be that person again. They both deserved to be happy, and he would commit every effort to making it happen, maybe even quitting his job. He was washing his hands when in the mirror Pentode emerged from a toilet stall.

“Hello, Dr. Pentode,” Ray said. He dried his hands on the sports coat and handed it over. “I found this in my truck,” he said.

“Raymond, oh, I—”

“Which is kind of strange, isn’t it?”

“Listen, Raymond.”

“If the next words out of your mouth are not ‘I apologize for fucking your wife,’ I will flush you down the toilet one fat body part at a time,” Ray said, but didn’t stick around long enough to hear what Pentode had to say. The temptation for violence was too great. Pentode of all people. It made no sense. It made no goddamn sense at all.

The hallway lights buzzed like a swarm of locusts presaging some half-assed apocalypse. The class bells rang, and faster than he could say Ivan Petrovich Pavlov the corridor teemed with rival tribes differentiated by the number of beats per minute throbbing around their precious heads and the corporate logos advertised on their too-tightly clothed chests. A hundred cell phones chirped all at once, a collaborative ringtone technique destined to put Schoenberg and Webern out to pasture.

Nan, the departmental secretary stationed next to the door, glowered at Ray without looking up from her video game. She had the restless look of someone standing in the rain waiting for her cocker spaniel to finish taking a steaming dump. Helen’s office sat next to the mail room. He entered without knocking — she was on the phone.

The esteemed Dr. Maas, the departmental chair whose job Helen presently occupied, was recuperating from chemo; she kept a webcam next to her sickbed and every week she and her partner emailed updates to the entire faculty about the progress of her deterioration. Helen was scheduled to fill in for her through the summer and fall term, when either Maas would return from the living dead or the provost would appoint a permanent replacement. Helen had the inside track on the job, the financial rewards of which might have tempted less compassionate souls to cheer on the cancer.

More grey hairs had sprouted since he last saw Helen. She looked tired, but also — he had to admit — beautiful. Her hair was longer and it accentuated the shapely bones of her face. “Can you hold on a moment?… Thanks. Raymond, you can see that I’m on the phone.”

“Do you find it strange that I need an appointment to see my own wife?”

“Sorry, I’m going to have to call you back.” She hung up. “Listen, Raymond, don’t make this any more difficult than it has to be.” She got up and closed her office door. A framed photo of Dr. Maas, completely and defiantly bald, hung on the wall.

“Why do people keep telling me to listen?”

“Everyone’s trying to help you, but you won’t let us.”

“I want to come home,” Ray said. “I know I was impossible to live with. I got a promotion and I’m learning to take on more responsibility, just like you wanted. I’ll get some help.”

“That’s … that’s not going to happen.”

“Just for one month. If it doesn’t work out, fine. I’ll never bother you again. I’ll go get a job somewhere else. Another state. One month — that’s all I ask.”

“Please, Raymond. This is difficult enough as it is.” She wiped at her eyes with a wrinkled tissue. “I think we’ve had a breakdown in communication. You’ve put me in a very difficult position.”

“I’ve put you in a difficult position? I’m not the one fucking somebody else.”

“Oh no?”

“No! Though I freely admit that I wanted to.”

“See this is what I’m talking about. Some things are serious, Raymond. You come strolling in here and try to make my life as miserable as your own. You think you’re so clever that you can just explain away your rotten behavior with some kind of clever mumbo jumbo, but you can’t. This isn’t some fictional Oceania or Eurasia, this is real. Your actions have real consequences in the real world. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t even know what real means. It means nothing. You think reality is something objective and external, but that’s delusional. Nothing is real, Helen, not my career or this university or that fat fuck Pentode. Not you or me, not our marriage. These are just constructs.”

“I filed for divorce,” Helen said.

“You did what?”

“We’re getting divorced. I called Jacobson and started the process.”

“Why would you do that?”

“What do you mean why? You’re a mess, Raymond.”

Through the window behind Helen’s head, a large metal dumpster was being borne aloft into the heavens by hundreds of inflated plastic bags. Ray rubbed at his eyes. When he looked again it had floated upward and out of view.

He needed to leave. He needed to leave this office and he needed to leave this entire rotting, putrid city and this entire corrupt system that he had contributed to all these years. If he was to stay, Ray would spend the next year working for Big Brother and espousing the benefits of fracking and then hate himself for the remainder of his life. He didn’t want to be part of the problem any longer. He had been so wrong. There was no goddamn way he could fix it by himself, not from the inside and not with a thousand pro bono environmentalist campaigns. He stood and walked out.

“Where are you going?” Helen called after him.

“I don’t know,” Ray said, but in fact he did. For the first time in his life, he knew exactly where he was going. Instead of heading straight home, he went to the front desk at Logos and handed in his company ID card. A week later, he was on the Isle of Jura.

A DOCTOR CAME OVER on the first ferry of the morning and tended to Ray’s wounds, which were neither superficial nor life threatening. The prognosis was better than the pain led him to believe. The doctor, out in the hallway, gave Mrs. Campbell the tongue-lashing of her long and nosy life. “Is this how you treat your guests on Jura?” she asked. “You should be ashamed of yourself!”

Ray restrained his laughter, but only because it hurt so goddamn much. The bickering was interrupted by the sound of someone coming up the stairs whistling. His next visitor was Mrs. Bennett, who had very thoughtfully brought him some expensive supplies from The Stores. “How are you feeling, Mr. Welter?”

“Like hell.”

“Well that’th to be expected — you have been thot. I’ve brought you thome thingth.” The box she carried contained bandages, ointment, cotton balls, medical tape. Everything he would require to keep the gunshot clean. “When you’re feeling up to it, I’d like to talk to you about your planth for Barnhill.”

“My plans for Barnhill?”

“Yeth. Our letting agenthy hath a young couple in London who ith quite eager to athume the leathe on the houthe.”

“You’re kicking me out?”

“Oh heaventh no, Mr. Welter. We had jutht thought that you would be leaving, given your condition. They are offering to pay conthiderably more each month than yourself, tho I’m confident we could work out a mutually beneficial arrangement. There are many other beautiful and more convenient hometh available should you with to thtay on Jura.”

“I’ll give it some thought, Mrs. Bennett. Thank you for the bandageth … I mean, bandages.”

He got out of bed. Every step hurt. The envelopes and pewter flask weighted down his pants. He had forgotten about that. In the movies, a man’s flask was supposed to deflect the bullet and save him from this kind of agony. Reality was infinitely more subtle, and more painful.

Still in his bloody clothes, he made it downstairs with Mrs. Bennett’s help and without running into Mrs. Campbell.

“Pleathe think about what I’ve thaid, Mr. Welter.”

“I will, thank you. I’ll drop by for some boots as soon as I’m feeling better.”

Ray sat on the porch of the hotel, unsure of his next move, until Farkas pulled up. He looked like he hadn’t slept. There were sticks and twigs in his hair and beard, mud on his nose. “As I understand it,” he said, “you’re lucky to be alive.”

“What’s so lucky about attempted homicide?”

“There is the attempted part.”

“Pitcairn tried to kill me,” Ray said. He had to bend over to climb into the car and pain filled his lungs. “He should be in jail.”

“He says it was an accident. And if he did go to jail, who would look after Molly? You?”

“What are you trying to say?”

“That you and I both know that no one here — and I mean no one — will take the word of a stranger over Gavin’s, even though we know you’re right.”

The surface of the road jostled the tiny car, sending pain squirting through his entire system until it settled into one all-encompassing ache that stretched from his groin to his teeth. “That doesn’t bother you?”

“A lot of things bother me, Ray. But that is simply how it is here.”

“We’re talking about attempted murder.”

“You have to let it go, as there are bigger and more important issues at stake.”

“More important than my death?”

“I’ve come to a bit of an insight, if you will. Gavin believes he’s the only one who understands how to maintain our traditional ways, but he may be trying to preserve something that never existed. The best bottle of malt ever produced is worthless if it stays in the bottle. And I’ve spent too many years trying to be accepted as something I already am. I know what you’ve done for Molly, and I want to help. I told her I would smuggle her off the island and help her get to Chicago.”

“Really? What if Pitcairn finds out?”

“In that event, he will most certainly have another attempted homicide under his belt. And even if he lacks the wisdom to understand as much, having Molly get an education is what’s best for her and what’s best for this island in the long run. The big picture here is the only picture worth attending to. I’m a historian, I’ll have you remember. That girl doesn’t belong here right now any more than you do. You’re not cut out for life on Jura — this isn’t exactly a theme park.”

“So I’ve learned,” he said. “What about you — do you belong here?”

“Aye, of course I do, even if not everybody appreciates that fact just yet. And if it’s my lot to be treated as an outsider on the only home I’ve ever known, so be it. And speaking of home — Mrs. Bennett tells me that a young couple keeps ringing up from London hoping to hire Barnhill.”

“She told me the same thing just now. It sounds like she wants to get rid of me.”

“No, we hate Londoners as much as Americans, but it does sound like they’d be willing to take over the lease. They’re apparently very keen on it. You might even make a profit on the deal.”

“Is that what you think this is about — making a profit?”

“Not really, that’s just something one says to Americans. She also sent along some wellies. They’re in the back. You can pay her whenever it’s convenient. Here we are.”

Farkas stopped at the end of the road. Ray climbed out and leaned on the open door to collect his strength for the walk ahead of him. “I appreciate your advice, Farkas. You’re right. Maybe it is time to go home.”

“I brought you a little get-well gift,” he said. He reached into a bag on the seat behind him and produced a bottle. The handwritten label said 1984.

“1984?” he asked.

“That’s when it was distilled. It’s an extremely rare whisky. I put a small batch aside because of that year’s significance to our merry little island. May it treat you well.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“How about, slàinte?”

“Slàinte, Farkas.”

“You get yourself better now. I’ll stop by in a few days, see how you’re holding up.”

The little car puttered away, back toward Ardlussa and Craighouse. Ray fingered the shape of the bandages under his clothes, the strips of cotton and medical tape holding his insides inside. It hurt so much. If he opened the bottle and drank a gulp, would whisky trickle out his wound and further stain his sweater? For the first time in months, years maybe, he had no desire for a drink.

The hike homeward took forever and each step hurt more than the previous. He clutched the bottle of scotch and his new boots — they looked comfy and dry, but he couldn’t bend over to put them on. The sky blazed in a spectrum of blues and watched over its own reflection in the sound. By the time he arrived at the crest and Barnhill came into view, it had ceased to be George Orwell’s house and had become his own. He had never felt more up to the challenge of being himself.

He was tempted to take a long nap, but lying down and getting up again would be way too painful. He made it to the kitchen for a glass of water and found a sunny spot in the sitting room to read his mail. With some reluctance he opened the strangely shaped envelope made of green paper reminiscent of the papyrus an intern once brought him from Egypt. The return address was printed with soy ink in a curling font designed to appear earthy and earnest and it came from an organization called the Ethos Co-Op of Chicago, Illinois. Before he opened it he knew that it contained a job offer from Bud.

He had not, however, expected the check made out in his name for $50,000.

Bud’s letter began “Dear Raytard” and detailed how his former friend had been so inspired by Ray’s bold decision to move to Scotland that he had arrived at an epiphany concerning the inherent evil of the business model at Logos. Bud had quit his job and opened his own agency, one organized around the principles of ethical responsibility and environmental awareness. Ethos Co-Op dedicated itself to working for progressive companies that focused on issues of local and global sustainability. He wanted Ray to sign on as executive vice president.

The case for returning to Chicago had become more persuasive, though it didn’t pass his notice that the word “nonprofit” was nowhere to be found in the letter.

“I traded in my SUV,” Bud had written. “Can you picture me driving a hybrid! Reuse recycle and all that shit. Please accept this offer. Ethos needs you.”

Ray sipped from his glass and remembered that it contained only water. The scotch had been such a constant in his life that it felt odd to drink anything else. He tucked Bud’s letter back into its envelope and placed it on the mantel instead of in the pile of kindling. There was another greeting card from his mother. The airmail stamp had been cancelled with a brown splotch of his own blood.

He spent the day drinking tea, of all things, and rereading the end of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Something felt different about the text this time. Something was different. It seemed too convenient to attribute the change to his near-death experience, but it was clear now that he had been so wrong about that book. He saw it now. The appendix to Nineteen Eighty-Four, the infamous and thorny essay “The Principles of Newspeak,” was in past tense. That meant it was set after the demise of the entire Oceania empire. The appendix hinted at a world after Big Brother.

Orwell was an optimist after all.

Flora was right.

The end of Nineteen Eighty-Four suggested that all the degraded conditions and noise pollution and invasions of privacy people put up with every single day — it could all eventually end. Even after the builders whitewashed over Flora’s graffiti, her message would remain there, hidden yet waiting to get read again some distant day after the current and all-too-real version of Big Brother disappeared.

He put Orwell down and reread the letter from Bud. The physical sensation of holding the check in his hand was not enough to convince Ray of its existence. He stayed up half the night considering his options.

When Molly showed up a few days later, his belongings were packed and Barnhill’s floors mopped clean. She had carried a picnic basket on her new bike, freshly arrived from a mail-order company in Oban, and let herself in without knocking. Ray was fully clothed this time. He sat in the kitchen sipping a cup of black tea.

“What happened to your face?”

He was clean-shaven, with a constellation of bloody toilet paper pieces orbiting his chin. His skin felt raw and taut. Exposed. “Your father is right about at least one thing,” he said. “You really are a little bitch.”

“I see now why he shot you. Anyway, I heard you were leaving.”

She knew where he was going. He hadn’t told anyone yet.

“Who else knows?”

“Everybody. Mind you, it wasn’t that difficult to figure out.”

“It’s funny how an attempted homicide can make you rethink your life.”

“Aren’t we being a bit melodramatic today?”

“Am I the only one who thinks getting shot is kind of a big deal?”

“I heard that the bullet only grazed you.”

“It was worse than that. Anyway, it’s more the intent that bothers me.”

Molly sat and helped herself to his plate of food. “How are you feeling otherwise?”

“The fever’s gone. But look.” He held his arm out and the coffee cup rattled in its saucer. “I have the shakes. It won’t stop.”

“Too much whisky last night?”

“Not enough. I haven’t had a drop since I got home. I’ve been shaking the entire time.”

“I hope you’re up for a walk. I’ve packed a picnic.”

“No way. I’m going to catch the ferry tomorrow and need to get some rest.”

“You are not going to spend your last day on Jura moping around this dreary house. There’s one more place I want you to see.”

“What is it?”

“I said I want you to see it, not hear about it. Jesus.” She ran upstairs to check on her easels and collect the few clothes she had left behind, which she carried back down in a bundle and stacked in the sitting room. “It appears that something is missing.”

“I should’ve asked. Is that going to be a problem?”

“Pack your raincoat and a blanket so we can sit without being eaten alive.”

Another unidentifiable dead animal lay prostrate on the steps. It was enormous — the size of a deer. They stepped over it. The sky was bright and the air sharp in his lungs. A bank of clouds in the distance promised a shower. The two of them walked westward or maybe northwestward at half their usual pace in deference to his wound. It felt more like a leisurely stroll than their typical forced march. The clouds moved in and an advance party of raindrops persuaded them to put their coats on and quicken the pace. It fell in sheets by the time they got to the cliff that overlooked the water and the island of Colonsay. “We never get to see the sunset from here,” Molly said with some disappointment. The storm sat swollen in the sky between them and the sun. “Mind you, I have another idea. Follow me,” she yelled over the sound of the rain and the surf.

Molly found a switchbacking path that led down the cliff and to the beach below. The descent was treacherous with mud and slick rocks. She moved as gracefully as a mountain lion and waited for him at the bottom, then took his hand and led him on farther. A lamb had spilled from the cliff and lay mangled on the ground, where it fed a murder undaunted by their presence. A crow popped out one of the animal’s white eyes and flew off pursued by his friends.

“Here we are,” Molly said. She pointed to the opening of a cave and ran inside. He shuffled after her. The cave smelled of rain and freshly mown hay. Spray-painted graffiti covered the walls and the small fire pit contained some charred beer cans. Molly pulled the blanket from his pack and spread it on the ground at the opening, just beyond the range of the dripping water. He sat with some difficulty. Molly curled up next to him for warmth and pulled one end of the blanket over the two of them.

Even with the ache in his side, Ray felt satisfied now: neither sad to leave Jura nor eager to return to Illinois. He enjoyed the quiet moment in Molly’s company and looked forward with equal parts anticipation and dread to whatever his life would present him with next. “It has occurred to me,” he said, “that I no longer have an email address or even a phone number, but once I get settled I’ll send you my contact info. I can look around for apartments, unless you want to live in the campus housing, which I don’t recommend. You’re going to love Chicago. I mean, it’ll be a little overwhelming at first, but you’ll—”

“I’m not going.”

“—find that. What?”

“Don’t be mad.”

“What do you mean you’re not going?”

“I’ve decided to stay on Jura.”

“Because of your father? You can’t listen to him! You need to decide for yourself.”

“Aye, he was against it, but this is my decision and mine only.”

“What are you going to do? Spend the rest of your life here?” He didn’t like the tone of his voice but didn’t know how to modulate it without sounding like even more of an asshole.

“Maybe I will, mind you. This is my home after all. I want to be a painter … no, I’m already a painter. No fancy university can make me get better at my art the way the sunlight and the sounds and the Paps will. I appreciate everything, Ray, I really do! But I belong here, at least for now.”

Ray felt like he had been shot all over again. Pitcairn had brainwashed this poor girl. There was no other explanation. The scholarship had cost him a fortune in the divorce settlement. Didn’t she understand the opportunity she was throwing away? “Don’t you understand the opportunity you’re throwing away?”

“I think I do. I’ll always be grateful to you, but there’s an opportunity here too.” The rain formed a wall in the mouth of the cave, but it appeared to be letting up. “To be honest, I’m a bit tired of every man I know telling me what I should be doing with my life.”

He closed his eyes and inhaled the musk of the cave and the sweat of Molly’s hair. Here he was, even further off the grid than ever before and outside of time, returned for a moment to a state of bucolic perfection. The rain slowed to a steady drip. Molly exhaled a wheezy snore. He slid her hair off her face and tucked the blanket under her chin. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re absolutely right.”

It was dark when they awoke. Neither of them had moved. “Oh hell,” she said. “I need to get home. My dad’s going to kill me.”

“You and me both.”

Ray stood and the soreness in his back and neck obscured the pain in his side. He helped Molly up. She kept the blanket wrapped around herself.

“I’ll come visit you in Chicago,” she said.

“I’d like that. I’ll need to find a place to live first, though. Speaking of which, my lease of Barnhill isn’t up for a few more months. If you have any more trouble at home you’re welcome to stay there.”

“What about the people from London?”

“If they offer you enough money for the place, take it.”

“I may just do that, thank you. It looks like I need some new art supplies.”

“Yeah, about that.”

Back at Barnhill, he had removed her self-portrait from the bedroom wall and, without asking, rolled it up and packed it with his things to bring to Chicago. It remained unfinished — she never got around to painting her hands or feet.

“I would’ve given it to you if you’d asked, you know. I do want you to have it.”

“Thank you — that means a lot to me. You can finish painting it when you come visit.”

“It is finished, Ray, or at least as finished as I want it to be. Portraits are unlucky here. They say that the woman who gets her portrait painted will never enjoy a day of health ever again.”

“Do you believe that?”

“It doesn’t matter what I believe. I’m glad that at least my image, if nothing else, will get off of Jura. Now I really have to get home. You can find your own way back. Leave my bike in the garage. I’ll get it another time. Look!”

A falling star dripped into view, a hunk of rock that had come too close and got sucked into the earth’s atmosphere to die a fiery death. They watched it burn with its own innate sense of purpose, but it didn’t flicker out. It kept moving, steadily, perhaps in too straight of a line.

“They’re watching us,” Molly said.

“Who?”

“That’s a satellite.”

She was right — the flight path was too perfect to be natural. Only the manmade achieved such pristine linearity. Ray’s precise location at that moment, and at every other moment of his gleefully inconsequential life, could be found and plotted on some celestial map of the cosmos. That had always been true. There had only been the grid the entire time.

“I need to go,” he told her. “Goodbye, Molly.”

She hugged him and headed in the opposite direction, back to her father.

The next day, he awoke with the dawn and set out for a final errand. All of his affairs were in order except for one thing. Wind stirred in the trees. The sheep bah bah-ed at him with contentment, their bells tickling his ears. He smiled into the morning sunlight, and it smiled back at him. His new boots made all the difference in the world, and he regretted not buying them sooner. They were sure to keep his feet dry during even Chicago’s slushiest winter days. He didn’t look forward to those, but he also did. Some wool socks would be essential. Maybe he could score some from a local spinster before he left.

Smoke rose from Miriam’s chimney, so he knocked. “Miriam?” he called. No answer. He knocked again. “Miriam, it’s Ray.” Her dog growled at him from her new prison of barbed wire. It looked like she had grown even fatter. A curtain fluttered open at the next house over, where Mr. Harris’s truck was parked. Ray understood his desire to be left alone and had once shared it, but he gave Mr. Harris a regal wave all the same and the curtains shot closed with grumpy finality. Some people really did want to be by themselves.

Miriam opened the door a crack and blocked Ray’s view of the interior. Her face was covered in sweat, her hair matted to her forehead. “Hello, Ray, this is quite a surprise.”

“Did I catch you at a bad time?”

“No, I’m just dismembering some children so they’ll fit into my cauldron.”

“I’d be glad to help.”

“With all this proper nourishment these days, these vitamins and whatnot, their little bones aren’t as quite brittle as they used to be.” She smiled and wiped at her forehead with a paper napkin. A loud scraping noise came from the direction of the kitchen. “If I might have a moment to straighten up I would be glad to offer you a scone.”

“No, no, that’s not necessary — thank you. I just wanted to say goodbye.”

“Aye, I understand you’re taking your leave, and I hope you didn’t find we Diurachs too unaccommodating.”

“Well I did get shot and thrown into a whirlpool.”

“Aye, I can see how that might be frustrating. Speaking of which, before you go, do stop at the strand facing the Corryvreckan.”

“I know it all too well. In fact, I’m on my way there now.”

“Good, good. Some people will tell you that if you take a stone from that particular strand and bring it home with you, it means that you will come back to Jura one day.”

“I’ll do that. Thank you, Miriam.”

“God bless you, Ray,” she said and shut the door. She appeared to be in some hurry.

“Bye,” he said and there was so much more he wanted to say. He continued on to the island’s northern tip, where he had a date with a whirlpool.

On days like this one, even with the lingering discomfort, out in the sun on the planet’s last unspoiled corner, the amount left to learn felt more like a privilege than a chore. Jura still contained so many things beyond his experience or understanding — but so did Chicago.

The boat Pitcairn had commandeered still bobbed next to the creaking dock. Ray went down to the shore and chose a flat, grey stone to bring home then sat at the end of the pier with his feet dangling over the water. The Corryvreckan gurgled her farewells in the distance.

He pulled the first edition of Nineteen Eighty-Four from his pocket and tore out the first page, crumpled it up, and tossed it like a basketball free throw into the water. He had done the same thing in Chicago with his cell phone. It felt even better this time. Perhaps there was a trend in his behavior. The paper sat for a moment on the surface as if surprised to find itself getting wet, then caught a prosperous current and moved slowly away from the shore. With calm and joyous deliberation, Ray ripped all the other pages out, one after the other, for what had to be an hour or maybe two or three. He watched each page of the appendix float on the surface and drift, ever so slowly, in single file, toward the whirlpool: a fleet of rudderless paper boats carrying the sum of everything he had learned and wished to forget.