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own counsel when the Beagle ’s mad Capt. FitzRoy expounded at length during dinner—as if daring the naturalist to differ—on the Book of Genesis. (Once, only once, did he weigh in, when the captain was explaining the trickle-down benefits of slavery, proving our hero did have a backbone.) Did he float above the chickpeas and rice in the captain’s mess, a benign smile shielding his face, lost in barnacle dreams? Did he clutch his stomach and plead seasickness and flee to his cramped quarters?
    Something we can be certain C.D. didn’t consider: reaching across the table and throttling FitzRoy until the man’s eyes bulged from their sockets.
    We found his backyard well-kept, albeit oddly quaint. (“Holly Hobbie chic,” Stefan called it.) Garden gnomes stood here and there (“Gnomically,” Patel later said, as if reciting a Zen koan rather than a bad pun) amongst towering delphiniums and various mulleins. Lobelia and other generic annuals spilled from a small weathered wheelbarrow, and a blown-glass hummingbird feeder hung from the coral bark maple.
    Surely the W-Cs couldn’t have left these things? But it was even more inconceivable that they belonged to him. (It now seems laughable that we wasted so much time over the following week debating the question of whether he had bought all this in earnest or whether he had an understanding of its kitsch value. Karlheinz had posited the most plausible theory: “It could be they were his mother’s and he maintains them through a sentimental streak.” That we could understand, although Marcus couldn’t help reminding us that sentiment is anathema to design.)
    The “Q” stood in the centre of the yard like a Mayan shrine in the cloud forest of Cobán, feathered in smoke and snapping and spitting as fat hit the fire. Mosquito torches on bamboo poles flanked the barbecue. (Trevor’s wife deemed this “thoughtful.”) The patio table was laden with platters of raw meat, the variety defying categorization, but our host was all too willing to lead a tutorial. There were slabs of porterhouse steaks, rib-eyes, short ribs, spareribs, pork loin chops, lamb shoulder chops, and lamb leg steaks. He eschewed terms like “well-marbled” in favour of “nice and fatty” and smacked his palm down soundly on cuts he deemed particularly “bodacious.” We hardly need point out that there wasn’t a rub or a marinade in sight.
    REO Speedwagon blasted from what looked like car speakers attached to the balustrade of his deck. He later came strolling through the sliding doors with a guitar, yodelling “Ring of Fire” as a prelude to dishing up his Voodoo Chili, a recipe he had evidently learned in a squat on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince. He promised us his chili would fire up visions of Erzulie Dantor, the Haitian goddess of sex. She would make love to us in our dreams. His way of putting it of course involved more colourful terminology, in a dialect Patel, our own Henry Higgins, recalls as “Thunder Bay, 1977.”
    We will admit to the record that he was an attentive host that evening, exuding a kind of ruffian charm in his own milieu. He even kept his talk of body mounts and adjustable shocks to a minimum. It also bears mentioning that this was the closest we ever came to being chummy. At one point he and Trevor engaged in a tête-à-tête about the ultimate burger. (Trevor swears by a knob of frozen blue cheese encased in the centre of 275 grams of hand-chopped Kobe sirloin.) “No shit,” he kept saying, sounding genuinely impressed as Trevor pulled out his BlackBerry to do some quick temperature conversions (our host not having mastered the move from imperial to metric back in grade school). “No shit.”
    It turned out that among his many adventures he’d spent some time in the Australian outback. “Kangaroo,” he told us, “is a beautiful