Summary

The main narrative begins in the desert, at Richard Elster’s house, days or weeks after the prologue. Elster, 73, has just retired from his intelligence job at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. and has taken up refuge in the desert of an unnamed Southern state. Jim Finley, the unnamed man from the prologue, narrates the action in first person, as opposed to the distanced third person narration of the opening scene.

Jim listens to Elster talk about time and space, as well as philosophical topics such as the “true life,” which, according to Elster, is “not reducible to words spoken or written, not by anyone, ever.” (17) He believes that life happens in the small, quiet moments when people are left alone with their thoughts, when ideas like mortality creep into one’s consciousness. They are sitting on the deck, watching the sun set...