birthday, An unnamed African-American doctor who claims to specialize in such conditions takes him under his care at his private therapy center, the Remobilization Farm. As part of his schedule of therapies, Jake takes a job teaching at Wicomico State College, where he becomes friends with history teacher Joe Morgan and his wife Rennie. Joe and Jake enjoy intellectual sparring in a "duel of articulations". The philosophical Morgans have a marriage in which everything must be articulated, and in which "the parties involved are able to take each other seriously"—and to Joe "seriously" means sometimes beating his wife. The Doctor prescribes Jake "mythotherapy", in which he is to read Sartre and to assign himself "masks" to abolish the ego, inducing action through the adoption of symbolic roles. Jake seeks out a woman, Peggy Rankin, whom he had earlier picked up; when she rebuffs him, he succeeds in seducing her again by striking her, in imitation of Joe. While Joe busies himself with his Ph.D. dissertation, he encourages Rennie to teach Jake horseback riding. During their rides, Rennie and Jake talk at length about the Morgans' unusual relationship. After returning from one such outing, Jake encourages a resistant Rennie to spy on her husband. She is convinced that "real people" like Joe are not "any different when they are alone"; such people have "o mask. What you see of them is authentic." What Rennie sees of Joe while spying disorients her and her vision of him—he masturbates, picks his nose, makes faces, and sputters gibberish syllables to himself. Unmoored from the anchor that Joe has been for her, Rennie commits adultery with Jake; when Joe discovers it, he insists they maintain the affair, in an effort to discover the reasons for his wife's unfaithfulness. Rennie discovers she is pregnant, but cannot be sure whether Joe or Jake is the father. The Morgans visit Jake, Joe with Colt .45 in hand. Rennie insists on having an abortion, or she will commit suicide. Under an assumed name, Jake hunts for an abortionist; when Peggy refuses to help him find one, he strikes her. Unable to find a physician who will agree to the procedure, Jake turns to the Doctor. Rennie dies from the botched abortion. His relativist "cosmopsis" confirmed, Jake reverts to his paralysis. Two years later, as part of his Scriptotherapy on the relocated Remobilization Farm, he writes of his Wicomico experience.