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  Jenny had been beautiful in his dream. She had entered the room of the crying child like a vision. He couldn’t remember what she was wearing. Her hair was long and flowing. She was so beautiful that just looking at her did something tangible to him, produced within him something he could feel, a sense of longing that was physical, as if to touch her would be the fulfillment of all his desires. Even as he lay in bed worrying more and more about Lester, he could almost feel the dream again. He could almost recall that sense of yearning at the sight of Jenny. Once, in his early teens, after being awakened by a nightmare, he had wandered out into his back yard, where he had seen a single light on in his neighbor’s otherwise dark house. Without thinking much about what he was doing, he stealthily climbed a trellis to peek into the lighted room through the inch or two of space between the bottom of a shade and the window sill. Inside the room, his neighbor’s daughter, a girl a year ahead of him in school, was standing in front of a full-length mirror in her bedroom, inspecting and taking measure of her body, her pajamas on the floor at her feet. She’d pull her shoulders up and look at her breasts with her head cocked to the side. She’d turn her back to the mirror and twist her head around to see how she looked from behind. She did this for several minutes before lazily pulling her pajama bottoms back on and buttoning up her top while she gazed dreamily at nothing. When she turned off the light and disappeared in blackness, he climbed down quietly from the trellis and went back into his own yard, where he lay a long while on the grass with his eyes closed, trying to recall her every movement in front of the mirror. For the rest of his life, he’d remember those few minutes, and he’d never really understand why, except that, like Jenny in his dream, the beauty of his neighbor’s body and the stolen intimacy of watching her unobserved seemed somehow to transport him to a place so much more desirable than the revealed, ordinary world.

  T considered waking Jenny and decided against it. He rubbed his eyes, wiping away the last vestiges of sleep, and pulled himself up in bed. From the kitchen, he heard the rush of running water in the sink followed by a high-pitched moan from the water pipes, then a moment of silence after the last squeak of the old-fashioned faucet, then a heavy crash that was the sound of a water glass falling to the floor and breaking, and finally a soft curse and footsteps into the living room and the sound of a body dropping down into the cushions of the couch with a moan. He stood in the moonlit bedroom and went quietly as he could manage to his suitcase, where he found fresh clothes neatly folded and arranged. As he pulled on his underwear, careful not to make a sound, and slipped into khaki slacks and a blue knit shirt, he practically leaned out into the hallway listening to the various small sounds, the clanks and knocks, coming from the living room. He again considered waking Jenny as he sat on the edge of the bed to put on his shoes and socks, and again decided against it. He hesitated a moment longer, his heart beating fast and hard, then stood and went out into the hallway with all the casual bravado he could manage.

  Lester was on the couch in a long tongue of moonlight from the cabin’s front windows. He was sitting up, leaning forward with his weight on the balls of his feet, his elbows on his knees, holding his head in his hands. He seemed not to be aware of T. He sat on the couch breathing hard, the heels of his feet tapping a rapid beat against the air. He was barefoot and shirtless, the top button of his jeans undone and the zipper down an inch. The guitar case was opened at the foot of the couch and the guitar lay on the cushions next to his thigh. The instrument, as Lester had promised, was red. It was, however, an unusual shade of red, a resonant terra-cotta, an earthy red that brought to mind wet clay or a vein of muted crimson inside a rock crystal. The wood’s texture and polish was lustrous, the fingerboard inlaid with a naturally dark wood and spaced with silvery frets. As T watched from the hallway, taking in the scene, the guitar seemed to glow in the moonlight. It seemed to vibrate slightly, as if it might at any second simply rise up and float out the window, following the trail of moonlight off into darkness.

  In the center of the kitchen, a puddle of water was spiked with shards of broken glass. T sat on the arm of the couch. Lester nodded several times, more jerking his head than nodding. He seemed to be acknowledging T’s presence, though his face remained buried in his hands and his feet kept tapping their manic rhythm. T touched the guitar, running a single finger along the edge of the neck. He noticed, through the sound hole, a sliver of crumpled aluminum foil inside the guitar. Next to it lay a length of blue rubber tubing, maybe an eighth of an inch in diameter. He plucked the low E string with his thumb. It made a sick, wobbly sound.

  “Don’t do that,” Lester said through his hands. “Fuck’s wrong with you? Fucking asshole. Fucking clown. Fucking old man.” He rocked back and forth as he spoke each curse.

  “Lester—”

  “Don’t fucking Lester.” He took his hands away from his face and looked at T for the first time. “You piece of shit. You arrogant sum’ bitch.”

  T said, “Look—”

  “Don’t fuckin’ look nothing.” He jammed his hand through the sound hole into the guitar box and came up with the gun. He cocked the hammer and pointed it at T’s head.

  “This again?” T said, again surprising himself with his calm.

  “I’m thinking maybe I should blow you away. I’m thinking maybe you should die, T. What do you think?”

  T said, “What the hell happened, Lester? I thought we had—”

  “Shut up,” he said through his teeth. “Shut up, you miserable fuck.”

  “I’ll shut up,” T said. “But can you tell me—”

  Lester shoved the barrel of the gun into T’s chest, nearly knocking him off the arm of the couch. He said, “You don’t sound like you shutting up.”

  T steadied himself and crossed his arms over his chest.

  “That’s better,” Lester said. “You know what? You’re scum. I know you think it’s me, it’s us —but know what? That ain’t way it is.” He paused a moment and looked T up and down, almost as if he had suddenly forgot who he was talking to. He blinked and rubbed his eyes. He asked T, “Who you think I am?”

  T said, “What do you mean, Lester? What do you mean, who do I think you are?”

  “I mean what’s my fucking last name, Tom, ‘T’ Walker? Tom ‘T’ Aloysius Walker? You got four fuckin’ names, how come I only got one? That all you think I’m worth? One name?”

  “It never came up,” T said. “I don’t know. What’s your last name?”

  Lester tapped the side of the gun against his heart several times, hard, a gesture that mystified T. Trying to read the gesture felt like trying to interpret a foreign language. T folded his hands in his lap, half paralyzed with calm. He looked like a counselor working with an hysterical patient, trying to calm him with his own calm. He sat on the armrest, an older man neatly dressed in khaki slacks and a knit shirt, looking across the moonlit cushions at a shirtless, long-haired youth in unbuttoned jeans holding a small, lethal-looking pistol in his hand.

  “Deveraux,” Lester said. “Got some French, got some Cherokee.” He rubbed the butt of the gun against his temple as if trying to relieve a sudden itch. “You think I’m the scum,” he said, with his eyes closed. “But ain’t me,” he said. “Ain’t Jenny.”

  T said, “I don’t think anybody’s scum.”

  Lester nodded but didn’t respond.

  “Lester,” T said, “can you tell me what’s going on? I thought—”

  “Shut the fuck up, T.” He leaned back and held the gun in his lap with both hands. “I’m celebrating,” he said. “You got a problem with me celebrating?”

  “No problem,” T said. “What are you celebrating?”

  “Fish.” He smiled, as if suddenly pleased. “Caught me a stringer of fish. Man,” he said, excited, “soon as it got dark, bro— Fish started hittin’ like fuck-what, man. Boom, boom, boom,” he punched the air. “One after ’nother. Got must be fuckin’ eight fish out there on the stringer. Swear God.”

 
“No kidding,” T said. “What kind?”

  Lester gave T a sideways grin. He said, “You interested, huh?”

  “Sure,” T said. “What did you catch?”

  “You mean while I was out there fishin’ and you was in here with Jenny?”

  “Yes,” T said. “What did you get?”

  “Pickerel, I think, mostly. One monster: fuckin’ huge, must be three feet long, swear God.”

  “Brown?” T said. “Sharp teeth, like the pickerel?”

  “Uh-huh,” Lester said, watching T carefully, the gun still in his lap.

  “Sounds like a northern pike.”

  Lester nodded solemnly. “So how come you fuckin’ her again after I told you—” He grimaced, as if suddenly in pain. “I told you how much it hurt her and you in there at it again.”

  “We didn’t—”

  “Shut the fuck up, we.” Lester sat up straight, holding a cushion with his left hand, his right hand on the gun. “We,” he repeated. “What do you think, we? What are you like, high school romance now? You fuckin’ asshole.”

  “Nobody’s—”

  “Thing is,” Lester said, pointing the gun at T, more gesture than threat, “onliest thing is, you know you hurtin’ her. That’s the only thing far as I’m concerned. She’s about money, can’t blame her. She need money to get out. You got the money. That’s way it is for her. But you, you piece of shit. You think we’re scum? You hurtin’ her like that?”

  “I’m not hurting her.”

  “Fuck you’re not,” Lester said quietly. “You know you are.” He paused a second and then repeated himself even more quietly. “You know you are.”

  “Are you high?” T asked. “I don’t get the sudden change, Lester. A few hours ago, you were making a deal with me. Now—”

  Lester interrupted as if he hadn’t heard a word T said. “I never known Jenny to be with a guy much as she’s bein’ with you. You know what I’m sayin’?”

  “No,” T said, “I don’t.”

  “What’s she sayin’ to you, man? She sayin’ that she loves you? She tellin’ you that shit?”

  “Lester—”

  “She is, isn’t she? Fuckin’ bitch. You believe her?”

  “Look, Lester—” T touched his forehead, as if it might help him stay focused. “Can you answer my one question, please?” he said. “Didn’t we have a deal? What happened?”

  “She lying to you.” He leaned forward again, dropping back into his original position, holding his face in his hands, only now there was a gun in his right hand, the butt of it against his eye. “My daddy,” he said, “he basically a decent man. All he really care about, ’course, was fishing and fucking—and didn’t really matter who he did either with. He basically a good man, though.”

  “I’m sure he was,” T said.

  “You sure he was,” Lester mocked. “Get the fuck out of here,” he hissed. “Swear God I’m inch away from puttin’ a bullet through one of your eyes.”

  T stood. “I don’t get it,” he said.

  “You two seconds from being dead, you don’t get the fuck out of here.”

  T backed away several steps, then turned and walked down the hall to the bedroom. Inside, he closed the door behind him gently, careful to make as little noise as possible. Under his breath, he cursed the lack of a lock on the bedroom door, then scanned the room for a chair he might wedge under the knob—though he knew there was no such chair in the room. Behind him, Jenny lay on her side wrapped in a sheet and clutching a pillow to her breast. His heart was beating hard enough that he could feel it through his shirt, and he placed the palm of his hand over it and rubbed, as if trying to massage it to a regular beat. He sat on the edge of the bed, by Jenny’s feet, and waited in the dark for his breathing to even out and his heart to slow down. When he woke Jenny in a moment to tell her what was going on, he didn’t want to sound breathless and scared.

  T didn’t know much about violence. Once, at the gaming tables in Las Vegas, he had seen a man attack a dealer. He had gone with Brooke to Vegas, and at one point in the trip, he had been playing blackjack when the player next to him grabbed the dealer by her throat and pulled her over all the other players, scattering their cards and chips. The dealer was a strikingly beautiful woman in her twenties, with short dark hair, and he had thrown her to the ground, ripped her blouse half off, and punched her in the face multiple times before security finally gave up on trying to wrestle him off her and simply knocked him unconscious with a series of blows to the head using some kind of weapon T couldn’t quite make out, something small and lethal. The dealer had lost her shoes when he dragged her over the table, and she stood up, barefoot, with her blouse ripped open and her bra down around her stomach, and pushed people away from her—the people trying to attend to her—and went back to her station to resume her dealing position. She had already picked up a deck and was feeding it into an automatic shuffler before people realized she was in shock and forcibly covered her up and carried her away as she screamed curses for them to leave her alone and put her down. Within minutes, two minutes, three at the most, everything was back to normal; everything was exactly as it had been: dealers dealing, players playing, pit crew doing what they do. The whole violent incident was like a momentary disturbance in a fast-moving river.

  But T had never forgotten what it felt like to be right there next to that woman when she was attacked. It was as if the ordinary world were suddenly ripped away, something red and huge exploding out of a hidden place to pull her over the table and onto the floor. Almost impossible to explain how the very fabric of the world seemed to rip as the man’s heavy fists crashed down on her face, bloodying her lip and nose. When he pulled off her clothes, it was as if he were trying to tear through her skin. Later, T used words like savage and vicious to describe the attack, but there was no way, really, to get across how the world seemed to melt away under his feet, how everything felt suddenly changed and violated.

  When he rubbed Jenny’s shoulder, she opened her eyes, turned her head slightly to look up at him, and then closed her eyes again as if settling back into sleep.

  “Jenny,” he whispered, “you need to wake up.” He patted her hair and kissed her on the cheek. “Jen,” he said.

  “What?” she pushed her head down deeper into the pillow, her voice husky with sleep.

  “Lester’s got a gun,” he said. “He was pointing it at us; pointing it at me.”

  She turned over onto her back and crossed her arms under her head. She seemed immediately awake. “Lester pointed a gun at you?”

  “Did you know he had a gun?”

  She nodded. “A little one. A .38. He pointed it at you?”

  “He’s acting completely different,” T said. “I think he might be high.”

  “What do you mean completely different?”

  “I mean he’s like a different person. He doesn’t even sound the same. Now he’s got this country-Southern accent he didn’t have before.”

  “Fuck,” Jenny said and closed her eyes. She added, “The shit’s country to the bone. Comes out when he’s wrecked. He can’t hide it.”

  “What’s going on?” T asked. “Is he dangerous?”

  “Fucking jerk,” she said. “He didn’t have his works out, did he? Please don’t tell me he had his works out.”

  “What are works?”

  “Needle, spoon—haven’t you ever even seen a movie of somebody shooting up?”

  “I didn’t see a needle or any of that,” T said. “I did see a blue rubber thing, like they wrap around their arms.”

  “Just that?” Jenny asked.

  “It was inside the guitar. I saw it through the hole.”

  “I don’t know,” Jenny said. “It doesn’t sound like he shot up.”

  “He shoots up? What, crank?”

  “Every once in a blue moon. He won’t mess around with that shit but, you know, maybe a few times a year.”

  T climbed onto the bed and sat up next to Jenny. “He’s
crazy. What the hell are we supposed to do?”

  “Ride it out,” she said. She put her head on his thigh. “Just stay away from him till morning.”

  T stroked her hair. Lester was quiet in the living room. The only sounds were gusts of wind in the trees and rattling cabin windows. He relaxed against the headboard and shifted his weight to get comfortable. Jenny wrapped herself around him, holding on as if he were a blanket or a talisman that made her feel more secure. He closed his eyes and tried to settle in for the night. He thought, how different this moment in the Thousand Islands with Jenny and all those other moments half a lifetime ago with Carolyn. Now it was Jenny clinging to him as if he might keep her afloat through this night, and back then he had been the one clinging. He ran his hand along Jenny’s shoulder and over her arm, feeling tender toward her, for a moment seeing himself in her, remembering that feeling that someone else was in control and all you had to do was hold on and they’d take you with them along the right path, the safe way, the good way. But Carolyn had taken him nowhere. Her train stopped at the awarding of his degree, and once on his own he rambled as if lost for many years after. About that Alicia had been right. He had thought a great deal about what she said for a long time after she said it: he’d drifted for years until he married Brooke. Brooke gave him Maura and work and a path to follow, and he’d married Alicia to keep him on course. As he stroked Jenny’s arm in the wood-smoke-scented air of the bedroom, his thoughts rushed along the whole course of his life, as if in those few moments in the dark bedroom he might be able somehow to make sense of it, the life road he’d followed, the path that took him from a childhood on Long Island, to college in Syracuse, to a love affair with his professor, to years of wandering, to Brooke and marriage and Maura and a life in business, to abandonment by Brooke, as he had been abandoned by Carolyn, to Alicia and Evan and a few good years of their blended family, and then abandonment by Alicia, and he’d honestly never before that moment in bed with Jenny seen it that way, that every woman he loved abandoned him, and it hit him with enough power to make his body stiffen as he asked the obvious question, which was why that should be so—and when he had no answer, he let it go, and continued following his journey which led him after Alicia to Salem, and from there to here, back in the Thousand Islands, where he lay in bed with Jenny Cross, a Southern girl born into squalor and abuse and on the run from drug dealers, and outside beyond the closed bedroom door Lester high and brandishing a pistol, and T in a silent few moments casting the net of his thoughts over all of it as if there were an answer somewhere to find, and then the disturbing notion shot through him like a premonition that he needed to figure it out, to put his story together, this instant, this moment, this night.