Why Not You and I?

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The best friend a writer can have is an agent who truly believes that that writer is half as good as he thinks he is.

— Roger Wade, interviewed by Kent Allard in Possible Dreams

Originally, back during the War (which Marlowe understood to be World War II), Graceland State Psychiatric Hospital had been an army base, and some of the old-timers still referred to the center as Camp Underhill. Marlowe was never certain whether there had been a town (named Underhill) here before the base was built, or whether the town had grown about the periphery of the base (named Underhill) at the time when it was carved out of the heart of the scrub and pine wilderness. Marlowe probably could have found out by asking one of the old-timers, had he ever thought to do so, or had he even cared to know. It was more to the point that no wing of the red brick hospital was of more than two stories; further, that each wing was connected to the next by a long corridor. This, so Marlowe had been told upon coming here, had been a precaution against an air raid — an enemy sneak attack could not annihilate the outspread base with its absence of central structures and its easy evacuation. Marlowe was uncertain as to the means by which an Axis blitzkrieg might have struck this far inland, but it was a fact that the center contained seven miles of corridors. This Marlowe had verified through many a weary weekend of walking to and fro and up and down through the complex, making rounds.

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