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—Help me for a second, Dad.

—What?

—The pills on the bureau.

—Okay, okay. But do you hear what I’m saying? Everything could change, I could buy the old house back and that ugly pine hedge could be dug up and replaced with a Japanese maple tree like the one your mother planted, the smooth bark—

—Dad.

—Those small shiny leaves almost like the petals of a flower—

—The water glass—

—Spread like a fine carpet on the lawn, if I could just get in there with a stake—do you have paper somewhere, I have to write a letter to my bank and we can get it messengered downtown.

—Help me, please. Turn this off, here around my neck . . .

—Why are you wincing, Danny?

—Please.

—You must have paper somewhere.

2. Interview with Daniel Markham’s roommate, Al Turpin

—April 4th, we’ve got my roommate, Al, here. Al? Do you want to say something?

—Is this like a time capsule?

—I told you, it’s the start of the research. It’s a record, some confirmation that something’s happening.

—Right, well, I guess I feel like a lot is happening. I mean the whole idea of selling those old futons to help with the rent. I think that’s all gone really well. It’s very shrewd.

—All right, Al, but we’re doing the anecdotal sociology now, so let’s just move on. All right?

—Sure.

—Okay . . . we’re going to begin here with my friend Al Turpin, who’s twenty-six, an office temp, and he’s agreed to talk to us about his interest in philosophy . . . we’re just starting by asking people how it began.

—Well, the first thing I remember is my sister coming home from college and saying to me: “Scratch an altruist and watch a hypocrite bleed.” We were sitting out by the lake, and I felt this sudden flutter of excitement in my chest. The idea seemed so powerful, that I could know such a thing. Now I mostly just read. Like after work, I’ll come home and pick up whatever I’m working my way through, Leibniz or Hegel or whatever, and I’ll read a few pages, take some notes, just try to understand what they’re saying. It’s kind of like reading a big, very long story, starts with Zeno and those guys and then there are all these installments, all these episodes, and you don’t read it in order, you just get this idea of the overall structure of the story, the plot I guess, and you fill in the parts you don’t have. Some of it’s really boring. Like Spinoza. But you got to do it. I don’t know why really. You just have to.

—Can you describe reading the books, Al, the actual experience?

—That’s hard. I’d say the main thing is the sense of order. The sense that even if you can’t perceive the whole architecture of the argument at any given point, you know there is an architecture, that you’re in this man’s hands in a way, being carried along toward the completion of a vision, something he’s seen and is revealing to you slowly. There’s a tremendous comfort in that kind of order, even if you can’t see it . . . By the way, did that Dutch guy who called about a futon say when he was coming?

3. Interview with Daniel Markham’s friend, Kyle Johnson

—Yeah, just sit there, that’s fine. Okay, okay, we have Kyle here, a good friend of mine from Bradford High, and he’s going to talk to us, okay, okay, so tell us how the whole philosophy thing got started for you.

—Dan?

—Yeah?

—Are you all right?

—Me? Sure, sure. Fire away. You want some coffee? Al, get him some coffee.

—You look a little harried.

—I’m fine, really. So how did it start?

—Dan. I know it hasn’t been easy lately. I heard about your dad going back in the hospital. I remember all that stuff when we were kids. To tell you the truth I haven’t been so great myself. But I’m saying if you ever need a place to stay or anything.

—That’s very, very, very kind of you, Kyle. Now about philosophy.

—Have you been seeing your doctor?

—Whose fucking inquisition is this anyway?

—Okay, Dan, okay.

—All right, then. Philosophy.

—Well, I guess it began in the barn.

—The barn, okay, tell us about the barn.

—There was a room in the barn. A room I used to play in. No. Wait. I have to go back. I have to tell you about the newspaper.