Dex Graham woke with the sun in his eyes and the weave of Evelyn Woodward’s bedroom carpet printed on the side of his face. He was cold and his body was stiff and knotted with aches.

He sat up, wondering what had caused him to spend the night on the floor. He hadn’t slept on a floor since college. The morning after some nightmarish frat party blowout, drunk on the floor of a dorm room and wondering what happened to the strawberry blond grad student who had offered him a ride in her Mustang. Vanished in the haze. Like so much else.

A breath of cool air made him shiver. The bay window was wide open. Had he done that? The curtains tossed fitfully and the sky was as blue as china glaze. It was a quiet morning; there was no sound louder than the honking of Canada geese in the shallow water under the docks.

He stood up, a slow operation, and looked at Evelyn. She was awkwardly asleep under a tangle of cotton sheets. One arm was flung out and Roadblock lay stretched at her feet.

Had he been drunk? Was that possible? He felt the way he remembered feeling after a drunk—the same sensation of bad news hovering just out of reach, the night’s ill omens about to unreel in his head.

And he turned to the window and thought: Ah, God, yes—the defense plant.

He remembered the beams of light stabbing the sky, the way the bedroom had begun to pinwheel around him.

Beyond the window, Lake Merced was calm. The docks shimmered under a gloss of hazy sunlight. The masts of pleasure boats bobbed randomly, listlessly. And due east—beyond the pines that crowded the far margin of the lake—a plume of smoke rose from the old Ojibway reservation.