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interrogations.
    “Ah,” said Barbara, in her characteristic I-know-you-better-than-you-know-yourself tone. “Now that I don't believe. You are one person who is
always
up to something, at least up here.” She tapped her temple. “Weren't you telling us about some fascinating idea for a novel? About Alzheimer's?”
    Ruth had been afraid she'd remember this. Six or eight months ago the Bachmans had hosted one of their entertainments, a blind wine-tasting followed by parlor games. At the end of the evening, when she and Ben were standing in the foyer in a crowd of guests attempting to get past Barbara and out the door, Barbara asked her what she was writing these days. Feeling exposed and embarrassed and suspecting that Barbara knew quite well she wasn'twriting anything, Ruth mumbled that she'd been working on a novel about Alzheimer's entitled
It Will Come to Me.
    “What's that?” Barbara had asked, sharply enough to turn heads. “A novel about what?” “Alzheimer's,” said Ruth. Suddenly she was at the center of an urgent buzz of discussion. Everyone had something urgent to say. Stories about relatives who suffered from the condition. Reports of new research pointing to the benefits offish oil. Other reports implicating the heavy metals found in farm-raised fish. Millicent McCordle, an elderly classicist married to another elderly classicist, tugged at her sleeve and confided that she'd been worrying recently about forgetting names. “Oh, I'm no expert, Millicent,” said Ruth. It was another twenty minutes before they got out the door.
    “I'm sorry, Barbara,” she said now. “That was a joke.” “Ah,” said Barbara. “I see. A joke.” A small puzzled smile played around her lips. “A joke. About Alzheimer's.” As she considered this she allowed her gaze to wander out over the twinkling night campus. “Oh yes,” she said, as if recalling herself from an absence. “I've been meaning to ask you. How's Isaac? Just the other day I saw a study …”

CHAPTER TWO

    B en's office was on the third floor of Horace Dees Hall, newly built in memory of Horace Deming Dees, former director of the board of trustees. Horace Dees was the great-nephew of Lola Dees, founder of the university which began ninety years ago as the Lola Dees Institute. To the world these days it was LDI; to residents of Spangler, Texas, it was Loladees, emphasis on the third syllable; to students and faculty it was Lola. As the LDI Raptors loped onto the football field the brass section of the marching band blared “Whatever Lola Wants, Lola Gets.” And when, as sometimes happened, the Raptors scored a touchdown, the crowd rose to its feet and bellowed out a chorus of the old song by the Kinks:
    Well I'm not the world's most masculine man
    But I know what I am and I'm glad I'm a man
    And so is Lola.
    Lo-lo-lo-lo LOLA, lo-lo-lo-lo LOLA …
    Even if athletics was not its strong suit, Spangler was proud of Loladees. “The Harvard of the South,” they called it. The school was highly rated and hard to get into; the students were earnest and well behaved. If they were geeks, Spanglerites loved them all the more for it, as they would have loved an odd bright late-born child. They smiled indulgently at the tame university-sanctioned pranks that were part of orientation week every fall. They treated the faculty with a deference usually found in German university towns; Ben never tired of hearing himself addressed as
“Doctuh
Blau.” The university was strongest in the sciences, particularly in physics and engineering and microtechnology A few years earlier a study committee had been appointed to consider how better to balance the curriculum, and when it was decided to free up a portion of the university's considerable endowment to build Horace Dees Hall, it was also decided that the building would serve as the new home of the humanities departments.
    The doors of the new building had opened a year ago, admitting a stream of historians and