“My ass! I really love Ruth Ann. You should see the knockers on the child.”

  “A touching testimonial if ever I heard one. Listen. . .about that bullshit I was spouting last night. . .”

  His dark eyes became slits, the smile in his brushy face disappeared. “We’ll never speak of that again. Understood? Never.”

  He reached out and squeezed my forearm.

  I sighed in relief and smiled tightly and nodded, relieved. Killing Gary would have been no fun at all.

  He continued, though. “My sorry fat ass wouldn’t even be on this planet, if it wasn’t for you. I owe you big-time.”

  “Bullshit,” I said, but not very convincingly.

  “I’ve had a good life, at least the last ten years or so, since I met Ruthie. You’ve been swimming in Shit River long enough. Let me help you.”

  “Gary, I. . .”

  “Actually, I want you to help me.”

  “Help you?”

  Gary’s business was such a thriving one that he had recently invested in a second lodge, one across the way from his Gull Lake resort. He couldn’t run both places himself, at least not “without running my fat ass off.” He offered me the job of managing Sylvan.

  “We’ll start you at 50k, with free housing. You can make a tidy buck with no overhead to speak of, and you can tap into at least one of your marketable skills, and at the same time be out of the way. Keep as low a profile as you like. You don’t even have to deal with the tourists, to speak of—we have a social director for that. You just keep the boat afloat. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, and we shook hands. Goddamn I was glad I hadn’t killed him. . .

  Now, a little more than six months into the job, and a month into the first summer season, I was settled in and damn near happy. My quarters, despite the rustic trappings of the cabin-like exterior, were modern—pine paneling skirting the room with pale yellow pastel walls rising to a high pointed ceiling. It was just one room with bath and kitchenette, but it was a big room, facing the lake which was a mere hundred yards from the deck that was my back porch. Couch, cable TV, plenty of closet space, a comfortable wall bed. I didn’t need anything more.

  During off-season, I could move into more spacious digs if I liked, but I didn’t figure I’d bother. Just a short jog across the way was an indoor swimming pool with hot tub and sauna, plus a tennis court; a golf course, shared with Gary’s other lodge, was nearby. My duties were constant, but mostly consisted of delegating authority, and the gay chef of our gourmet restaurant made sure I ate well and free, and I’d been banging Nikki, the college girl who had the social director position for the summer, so my staff relations were solid.

  I took a shower after my push-ups and got into the usual gray Sylvan lodge t-shirt, black shorts, and gray-and-black Reeboks, to take a stroll around the grounds, and check up on the staff. I was sitting on the couch tying my tennies, with a good view of the patch of green and slice of sand below my deck, when I heard an unpleasant, gravelly male voice tearing somebody a new asshole.

  “Why the fuck didn’t you rent the boat in advance, Mindy?”

  “I’m sorry, Dick.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ, woman, you think I want to come to a goddamn lake without a goddamn boat?”

  His voice carried into my living room with utter clarity, borne by the wind coming across the lake.

  I looked up. He was big—not as big as my friend Gary, but big enough. He wore green-and-red plaid shorts and a lime-green golf shirt and a straw porkpie hat with a wide leather band; he was as white as the underbelly of a crocodile, except for his face, which was a bloodshot red. Even at this distance I could see the white tufts of eyebrows over narrow-set eyes and a bulbous nose.

  He was probably fifty, or maybe more; his wife was an attractive blonde, much younger, possibly thirty-five. She wore a denim shorts outfit that revealed an almost plump but considerably shapely figure, nicely top-heavy. Her hair was too platinum for her age, and too big for her face, a huge hair-sprayed construction with a childishly incongruous pink bow in it.

  Her pretty face, even from where I sat on my couch, was tired-looking, puffy. But she’d been beautiful, once. An actress or a dancer or something. And even now, even with the too big, too platinum hair, she made a man’s head turn. Except maybe for my chef.

  “But I thought you’d use your brother’s boat. . .”

  “He’s in fucking Europe, woman!”

  “I know. . .but you said we were going to use Jim’s boat. . .”

  “Well, that fell through! He loaned his place and his boat to some fucker from Duluth he wanted to impress! Putting business before his own goddamn brother. . .”

  “But I didn’t know that. . .”

  He grabbed her arm; hard. “You should’ve made it your business to know! You were supposed to make the vacation arrangements; God knows you have little enough to do otherwise. I have a fucking living to make for us. You should’ve got off your fat ass and. . .”

  “Let’s talk to Guest Services,” his wife said, desperately. “Maybe they can help us rent a boat somewhere in the area.”

  “Excuse me!” I called from the deck.

  Still holding onto the woman’s arm, the aptly named Dick scowled my way.

  “What do you want? Who the hell are you?”

  I was leaning over the rail. “Em the manager here. Jack Keller. Can I be of any help?”

  He let go of her arm and the plump, pretty blonde moved toward me, looking up at me with a look that strained to be pleasant. “I called both numbers your brochure lists, and wasn’t able to rent a boat. . .”

  “It’s a busy time,” I said. “Let me look into it for you.”

  “We’re only going to be here a week,” Dick said. “I hate to waste a goddamn day!”

  She touched his arm, gently. “We wanted to golf while we’re here. . .we did bring the clubs. . .we could do that today. . .”

  He brushed her hand away like it was a bug. “Probably have to call ahead for that, too.”

  “I’ll call over for you,” I said. “You are. . .?”

  “The Waltons,” he said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “We’re the fucking Waltons! Dick and Mindy.”

  The Waltons. Okay. . .

  “Dick, I’ll make the call. After lunch, around one-thirty a suitable tee time?”

  “Good,” Dick said, pacified. “Thanks for your help.”

  “That’s what I’m here for,” I said.

  “Thank you,” Mindy said, and smiled at me, and looped her arm in his, and he allowed her to, as he walked her over to the restaurant.

  I called over to the golf course and got the Waltons a tee time, and called Gary over at Gull Lake Lodge to see about a boat.

  “They should’ve called ahead,” Gary said. “Why do you want to help these people? Friends of yours?”

  “Hardly. The husband’s an obnoxious cocksucker who’ll browbeat his wife into a nervous breakdown, if I don’t bail her out.”

  “Oh. The Waltons.”

  “Addams Family is more like it. So you know them?”

  “They were at Sylvan the last two seasons. Dick Walton is a real pain in the ass, and an ugly drunk.”

  “Maybe we don’t want his business.”

  “Trouble is, he’s as rich as he is obnoxious. He’s from Minneapolis—runs used car lots all over the Cities. Big fucking ego—does his own commercials. ‘Big Deals with Big Dick’ is his motto. . .”

  “Catchy.”

  “It’s been popular with Twin Cities school kids for a couple decades. He’s worth several mil. And he brings his sales staff up for conferences in the off-season.”

  “So we cater to him.”

  “Yeah. Within reason. If he starts busting up the bar or something, cut him off and toss his ass out. When he starts spoiling things for our other guests, then fuck him.”

  “I like your attitude, Gary. But what about a boat?”

  “He can use mine for the week. It’s down at dock nine.”

  “That’s generous.”

  “Generous my ass. Charge him double the going rate.”

  THE RESTAURANT AT Sylvan’s is four-star, and it’s a real asset for the business, but it’s the only thing Gary and I ever really disagreed about. Dinner was by reservation only, and those reservations filled up quick; and the prices were more New York than midwest.

  “The goddamn restaurant’s a real calling card for us,” Gary would say. “Brings in people staying at other lodges and gives ’em a look at ours.”

  “But we’re not serving our own guests,” I’d say. “We’re a hotel at heart, Gary, and our clientele shouldn’t have to mortgage the farm to buy supper, and they shouldn’t get turned away ’cause they don’t have reservations.”

  “I appreciate your dedication to the guests, Jack. But that restaurant brings in about a third of our income, so fuckin’ forget it, okay?”

  But of course I didn’t. We had this same argument at least twice a month.

  That particular evening I was having the house specialty-pan-fried walleye—and enjoying the way the moon looked refleeted on the silvery lake when I heard the gravel-edged sound of Dick Walton’s voice, singing a familiar tune.

  “You’re a stupid cunt!” he was telling her.

  They had a table in the corner, but the long, rather narrow dining room, with its windows on the lake, didn’t allow anyone much privacy. Even approaching nine thirty, the restaurant was full—older couples, families, a honeymooning couple, all turned their eyes to the asshole in the lime sportcoat and green-and-white plaid pants who was verbally abusing the blonde woman in the green-and-white floral sundress.

  She was crying. Digging a Kleenex into eyes where the mascara was already smeared. When she got up from the table to rush out, she looked like an embarrassed, haunted raccoon.

  He shouted something unintelligible at her, and sneered, and returned to his big fat rare steak.

  The restaurant manager, a guy in his late twenties who probably figured his business degree would get him a better gig than this, came over to my table and leaned in. He was thin, sandy-haired, pockmarked; he wore a pale yellow sweater over a shirt and tie.

  “Mr. Keller,” he said, “what should I do about Mr. Walton?”

  “Leave him alone, Rick. Without his wife to yell at, I doubt he’ll make much more fuss.”

  “Should I cut him off with the bar?”

  “No.”

  He gave me a doubtful expression, one eyebrow arching. “Personally, I. . .”

  “Just leave it alone. If he passes out, he won’t bother his wife or anybody, and that would probably be ideal.”

  Rick sighed—he didn’t like me much, knowing that I was lobbying to have his four-star restaurant turned into a cafeteria—but he nodded in acceptance of my ruling, and padded off.

  I finished my walleye, touched a napkin to my lips, and headed over to Walton’s table.

  “You got my message about the boat?” I asked.

  His grin was tobacco-stained; the tufts of white eyebrow raised so high they might have been trying to crawl off his face. “Yeah! That was white of you, Jack! You’re okay. Sit down, I’ll buy you one.”

  I sat, where his wife had been (her own walleye practically untouched on the plate before me), but said, “I had enough for tonight. I know my limit.”

  “So do I, buddy boy. . .” He pointed a steak knife at me and winked. “. . .it’s when the fuckin’ lights go out.”

  I laughed. “Say, what was the little woman riding you about? If you don’t mind my asking.”

  His face balled up like a fist. “Bitch. Lousy little cunt. She fucked up royal this afternoon.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, fuck her. We’re playing with another couple—the Goldsteins, from Des Moines. He’s a dentist. Those docs are loaded, you know. Particularly the Hebrew ones.”

  “Up the wazoo,” I affirmed.

  “Anyway, Mindy is a decent little golfer. . .usually. Shoots a 19 handicap on the country club course back home. . .but this afternoon she didn’t shoot for shit. I lost a hundred bucks because of her!”

  “Well, hell, Dick—everybody has a bad afternoon once in a while.”

  His aftershave wafted across the table to tickle my nose—a grotesque parody of the pine scent that nature routinely provided us here.

  “I think she did it just to spite me. I’d swear she muffed some of those shots just to get my fuckin’ goat.”

  His speech was pretty slurred.

  “That sounds like a woman,” I said.

  He looked at me with as steady a gaze as he could muster. “Jack—I like you.”

  “I like you, Dick. You’re a real man’s man.”

  I offered him my water glass for him to clink his tumbler of scotch on the rocks against.

  “I’ll have to sneak away from the little woman,” he said, winking again, “so we can spend some quality time together.”

  “Let’s do that,” I said. “You going fishing tomorrow?”

  He was lighting up an unfiltered cigarette; it took a lot of effort. “Yeah—me and that kike dentist. Wanna come along?”

  “Got to work, Dick. Check in with me later, though. Maybe we can take in one of the casinos.”

  “One of the ones those injuns run?”

  Gambling having been ruled legal on reservation land, casinos run by Native Americans were a big tourist draw in our neck of the woods.

  “That’s right, Dick. A whole tribe of Tontos looking to fleece the Lone Ranger.”

  “Hah! How ’bout tomorrow night?”

  “We’ll see. If you’re getting up early tomorrow morning, Dick, to fish, maybe you ought to hit the sack.”

  He guzzled at his drink. “I ought to hit that fuckin’ cunt I’m married to, is what I oughta hit.”

  “Take it easy. It’s a hell of a thing, but a man can get in trouble for hitting a woman, these days.”

  “Hell of a thing, ain’t it, Jack? Hell of a thing.”

  I walked out with him; he shambled along, slipping an arm around me, cigarette trailing ash.

  “You’re a hell of a guy,” he told me, almost crying. “Hell of a guy.”

  “So are you, Dick,” I said.

  Outside the real pines were almost enough to cancel the room-freshener cologne he was wearing.

  Almost.

  I WAS SITTING in the dark, in my underwear, sipping a Coke in the glow of the portable television, watching a Randolph Scott western from the 1950s. I kept the sound low, because I had the doors to the deck pushed open, to enjoy the lake breeze, and I didn’t want my movie-watching to disturb any of the guests who might be strolling along the beach, enjoying the night.

  Something about the acoustics of the lake made her crying seem to echo, as if carried on the wind from a great distance, though she was at my feet, really—stumbling across the grass beneath my deck.

  Underwear or not, I went out to check on her—because the crying sounded like more than just emotions: there was physical pain in it, too.

  “Mrs. Walton,” I called, recognizing her. She still wore the flowered sundress, the scoop top of it displaying the swell of her swell bosom. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded, stumbling. “Just need a drink. . .need a drink. . .”

  “The bar’s closed. Why don’t you step up here, and I’ll get you a beer or something.”

  “No. . .no. . .” She shook her head and then I saw it: the puffiness of the left side of her face, eye swollen shut, the flesh already blackening.

  I ran down the little wooden stairs; if somebody complained to the manager about the man running around in his underwear, well fuck ’em: I was the manager. I took her by the arm and walked her up onto the deck and inside, where I deposited her on the couch in front of the TV, where Randolph Scott was shooting Lee Van Cleef.

  “Just let me get dressed,” I said, and I returned with pants on and a beer in hand, which I held out to her. “It’s all I have, I’m afraid,” I said.

  She took it and held it in her hands like something precious; sipped it like a child taking first communion.

  I got her a washcloth with some ice in it.

  “He’s hit you before, hasn’t he?” I said, sitting beside her.

  She nodded; tears trickled from the good eye. Her pink-bowed platinum blonde hair wasn’t mussed: too heavily sprayed for that.

  “How often?” I asked.

  “All. . .all the time.”

  “Why don’t you leave the son of a bitch?”

  “He says. . .he says he’ll kill me.”

  “Probably just talk. Turn him in for beating you. They go hard on guys who do that, nowadays, and then it’ll be harder for him to do it again.”

  “No. . .he would kill me. Or have somebody do it. He has. . .the kind of connections where you can get somebody killed, if you want. And it’ll just be written off as an accident. I bet you find that hard to believe, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.” I sipped my Coke. “Sounds utterly fantastic.”

  “Well, it’s true.”

  “Are you sure you’re not staying ’cause of the prenup?”

  She sighed, nodded slowly, the hand with the ice in the washcloth moving with her head. “There is a prenuptial agreement. I wouldn’t get a thing. Well, ten thousand, I think.”

  “But you’re not staying ’cause of the money.”

  “No! I don’t care about the money. . .exactly. I got family I take care of. A younger sister who’s going to college, mom’s got heart trouble and no insurance.”

  “So it is about money.”

  The good eye winced. “No! No. . .it was about money. That’s why I married Dick. I was. . .I was trash. A waitress. Topless dancer, for a while. Anything to make a buck. . .but never hooking. Never!”

  “Where did you meet Dick?”

  “In a titty bar a friend of his used to run. I wasn’t dancing, then. . .I was a waitress. Tips in a topless place are always incredible.”

  “So I hear.”

  “This was, I don’t know. . .over ten years ago.”

  “You been taking this shit all that time?”

  “No. He was sweet, at first. But he didn’t drink as much in those days. The more he drank, the worse it got. He calls me stupid. He can’t have kids. . .his sperm count is lower than he is. But he calls me ‘barren’ and hits me. . .says I’m fat. Do you think I’m fat?”