During his job interview, Fogg meets the 86-year-old Thomas Effing, his new employer. Effing is unable to see and wears eyepatches over both eyes, and he also uses a wheelchair.

During the interview process, Fogg is received by Rita Hume, Effing’s longtime housekeeper and nurse. Hume leads him to the living room and warns him about Effing’s “strange” manner, which she explains is caused by grief over the loss of his last companion. Effing proves to be a cantankerous fellow who is fond of deception. He tests Fogg’s vision and descriptive ability by asking Fogg to describe him. Fogg expresses skepticism that Effing really is visually impaired, citing the redundancy of his eyepatches. Effing then asks Fogg if he can endure speaking for hours without pausing, since his work will involve reading to Effing on most afternoons. Fogg believes that he can. Effing warns Fogg to be afraid of him because he possesses other abilities, like telekinesis. When Fogg replies that his own powers are ordinary to any human being, Effing challenges him to identify himself as either a rabble-rouser or a victim. Fogg indulges Effing’s other questions affirmatively, prompting Effing to hire him.

Fogg moves out of Zimmer’s apartment, and the narration reveals that the two friends will only reunite over a decade later, when Zimmer has become a father and a French film scholar. Hume orients Fogg as he settles into Effing’s apartment, explaining that her responsibilities are focused around Effing’s physical health, while Fogg must attend to the man’s spiritual health. Hume privately reports that Effing was pleased with Fogg’s voice, which felt familiar to him.

Fogg’s first days with Effing are challenging as Effing tests him in various ways. Over several days, he switches out his eyepatches for prescription glasses or a blindfold. Fogg resists the temptation to call him out, though he finds himself irritated by Effing’s behavior. Kitty encourages him to keep the job. Effing assigns Fogg to read him books on travel and historical expeditions, and he rejects any of Fogg’s attempts to influence his reading material. When Effing proves his encyclopedic knowledge of each book’s whereabouts in his library, he reminds Fogg never to take things for granted.

Effing is so devoted to maintaining his daily schedule that he frequently cuts Fogg off mid-sentence in order to take his next meal. Effing is an especially messy eater, which Fogg believes is another test to provoke his repulsion. Fogg comes to admire and depend on Hume for her patience with Effing, whom she manages as if she were the mother to a small child. This dynamic is compounded by the fact that Hume has very little in the way of a personal life outside of her work with Effing; she has long been a widow, and her children are adults who live elsewhere. The only exception is her brother Charlie, a veteran bomber pilot who lives at the VA Hospital.

Effing surprises Fogg with occasional displays of kindness. On one occasion, Fogg tells Hume and Effing about his mother’s death, which prompts Effing to share that his last companion, a man named Pavel Shum, died under similar circumstances. Effing speaks warmly about Pavel, whom he had lived for nearly 40 years and thought of as his only true friend.

The first time Fogg takes Effing out on a walk, it is too cold for Fogg’s leather jacket to suffice, so Effing gives him Pavel’s coat to wear as well. Effing makes Fogg describe the surroundings, urging him to use his vivid language to paint a picture of the environment. Though Fogg is initially humiliated by Effing’s admonition, he learns to sharpen his language not just for his employer’s sake, but for his own, treating the exercise as a form of mental and spiritual training. After several weeks, Fogg learns how to articulate the world in terms that Effing can appreciate.

On their walks, Fogg and Effing bump into people who recognize the elderly man. These encounters reveal Effing’s gentlemanly traits. Several months into his employment, Fogg asks Effing why he chooses to live in New York rather than the countryside, given how much he enjoys the outdoors. Effing replies that he has already lived in the “middle of nowhere” (126) and doesn’t need to do it again.

In December, Effing instructs Fogg to start reading the newspaper to him, and each session usually ends with the obituaries section. After two weeks, Effing indicates that he was getting Fogg used to the language of obituaries so that they could start working on a major project together: Effing’s own obituary. Effing predicts that he does not have much time left to live, and he expresses confidence that the press will publish his obituary because they had done so 52 years ago: the last time he was declared dead. Back then, Effing was known as a painter named Julian Barber, though Fogg has never heard of Barber before.

Effing admits that he used to tell people fake stories about his life to impress them, and he did this so often that he can no longer remember who knew which story about his life. Fogg wonders why Effing is willing to tell him the truth now when he couldn’t even tell it to Shum. Effing answers that he has no one else to listen to him anymore.

The next morning, Effing begins by launching into an anecdote about a man he knew named Ralph Albert Blakelock, who had traveled west and gone to live in an Indigenous community. Blakelock was a prolific artist who painted on everything he could find. When he tried to pass off hand-painted money at the bank, he was made to enter a psychiatric hospital, where he continued to paint. During this time, his work started to sell, culminating in the sale of a piece called Moonlight, which fetched a record sale price for a work by a living artist in the United States. Even then, Blakelock and his family lived in poverty. Effing speaks admiringly about his frantic painting technique. When Fogg confesses that he has also never heard of Blakelock, Effing orders him to travel to the Brooklyn Museum with his eyes closed, keeping himself in a state of total silence and thoughtlessness. There, Effing says, Fogg will find Moonlight, which he must study for no less than one hour.

Fogg follows Effing’s instructions, taking care to block out the temptation to listen to other conversations along the way. He gradually realizes that Effing wanted him to sharpen his craving for vision before seeing the painting. At first, Fogg is underwhelmed by Moonlight’s small size, but he comes to appreciate its depiction of a serene Indigenous campsite illuminated by an uncannily bright moon. Looking at the date on the painting, Fogg theorizes that Blakelock was mourning the plight of the Indigenous communities. Later that afternoon, Fogg does research on Blakelock and verifies Effing’s story.

Effing formally begins his recollections with his admiration for the Serbian American futurist, Nikola Tesla. While Effing was in his teens, he learned that Tesla planned to build the Wardenclyffe Tower in his town of Shoreham. The moment that Effing and Tesla exchanged glances, Effing felt that Tesla looked through him as if he were nothing. He describes this as his first experience of mortality, which changed him forever and made him resolve to become a painter against his father’s wishes. When his father died, Effing inherited his Wall Street fortune and managed to support his artistic career, which specialized in the depiction of space. He bookends the anecdote on Tesla with a story about their final encounter, in which Effing mocked Tesla by giving him money while the latter was in poverty.

Effing then talks about a fellow painter and friend named Thomas Moran, who in 1916 convinced Effing to go on a journey to paint scenes from the American West. Effing, who was then 33, felt that the trip would give him distance from Elizabeth Wheeler—his wealthy wife, whom he despised. Effing invited an aspiring topographer named Edward Byrne to join his party. The night before Effing left, Elizabeth offered to have sex with him, and he accepted.

Effing enlisted the help of a man named Jack Scoresby to serve as his and Byrne’s guide in Utah. Though Effing did not trust Scoresby, he did not want to wait any longer to begin the expedition. Right before they set off, Byrne told Effing that all land measurements were based on their relative position to heavenly bodies, including the moon. This fact fascinated Effing, who concluded that astronomy was the first principle of topography and that no one could ever figure out where they were without looking to the sky first.

Over several weeks of travel, tensions grew between the two voyagers and their guide. On their way to the town of Bluff, Scoresby suggested a dangerous shortcut that would cut their week-long route down by two days. However, Byrne fell off a cliff on this path and was severely injured. Scoresby suggested euthanizing Byrne, while Effing insisted on keeping him alive. Eventually, Scoresby decided to leave both men behind. Though Effing hoped that Scoresby would send back help to retrieve them, he later realized that Scoresby simply rode away and never spoke of them again. Byrne died four days later, forcing Effing to find his way back to society alone. Effing admits that when he buried Byrne, he screamed and cursed at God.