The Lake, the River & the Other Lake Page 38

  And there was footage of his deputy, shot in the van, he guessed, but it didn’t look like the inside of a van behind her. It was very professional. Someone had even spruced her up, he thought, gave her a little makeup and maybe primped her hair.

  And that bitch Natalie Allen loved her.

  He knew right then, even before the hard plastic seat started cutting into his ass, that he wasn’t going to be able to fire her for this. Forget firing, he thought. When the election rolled around, if she ran against him, he probably wouldn’t stand a chance. You can’t win against someone who’s been on CNN.

  74

  BARRY SELF, real estate broker and part-owner of the Riverview Bed & Breakfast, wished he was alone. He’d really hoped his wife wouldn’t join him this evening walking their high-maintenance dog down to the beach. It was one of the evenings he was supposed to “casually” meet up with John Schank, his secret partner, down along the Lake Michigan side of the point. They would go over the latest version of their business prospectus for “Sumac Estates,” sit on a bench or a driftwood log and discuss what they needed to do next. They were still working out the details—nailing down the location, agreeing on a major investor to approach, tweaking it constantly—but already he was confident they were going to make a bundle. It would be the biggest real estate development to ever hit Weneshkeen. Granted, the business proposal was still evolving, but between Schank’s juice at the savings and loan and his own real estate expertise, it couldn’t possibly go south now.

  They’d agreed to hold off telling their wives. No sense, they figured, taking a chance of gossip getting around and foiling their plans, raising people’s hackles or driving up the asking price of land, or stirring up gripers who would rail against two relative outsiders significantly altering the local landscape and tax base. No sense giving people time to throw up more roadblocks. Not until it was all-systems-go.

  But tonight, his wife, Kathy, had tagged along and he needed to figure out a way to ditch her. Despite the several stops for Oodles to unload, they’d managed to make it down to the water’s edge before dark. They hadn’t missed the sunset. He stood close behind his wife, the dog noodling around at their feet with something dead and fishy, and they were looking straight out at the last orangey glimpse, like the slit eye of a sleepy wink, of the sun setting somewhere over the theoretical Wisconsin. And then it was purply-gray, twilight. He rubbed with rapid friction on his wife’s arms and asked her if she wasn’t cold; if maybe she wanted to go back without him and he’d finish up with the dog alone, prodding its congested anal glands with a Q-tip. John Schank was either about to appear or was waiting in the shadows, holding back till he got rid of Kathy.

  “Sweetie,” she said. “You can keep me warm . . .” She leaned into him, tipping her head back lazily, starting to turn, to be kissed, when a bright light appeared over the lake and they both froze, watching it. It seemed to drop straight down with the coming darkness that was descending from the east at their backs. Maybe it came from behind them, from inland, a bottle rocket lobbed from the village, over the trees, over their heads . . . but no, it wasn’t a bottle rocket. It didn’t continue into the water but hovered, then seemed to flare, coming toward them, back to shore, then zigged sideways, heading north in the direction of the tip of Sumac Point, where the ruined lighthouse no longer stood, but then reversed, another change of plans, back the other way, past them again, laterally, moving south. They stood, watching it disappear down the coastline, and then they both breathed out at once and he saw that Kathy was patting herself down, searching her pockets for her cellphone.

  “Oh, fudge, oh fudge, oh fudge!” she said. “I left the phone back at the house!” She turned away from the lake so suddenly she kicked sand on his shoes.

  “No,” he said. “Wait! Hold on. Don’t.” He gripped her arm, afraid she was about to run back up the path, to the road, maybe flag somebody down or get to the pay phone in the park, maybe sprint all the way back to the house. He was thinking of the project, Sumac Estates. This “lights in the sky” nonsense that had been going around this summer didn’t need any further confirmation or flame-fanning—not from them. It was exactly the kind of tacky, low-rent Ripley’s Believe-It-or-Not, Irish Hills, Mystery Spot tourist-trap three-ring-circus vibe that they absolutely did not need attached to this great thing he was cooking up with Schank. These units were going to have white gravel driveways. Pure white. They were supposed to be high-end; classy. Twenty-four-hour security monitors, built-in sprinklers, heated roofs, three-car garages.

  And he’d seen this happen before, back when he was a teenager. He’d grown up just outside Ann Arbor and remembered well the hubbub of their own UFO scare, back in 1966. Time or somebody dubbed it “Saucer City USA” and he reminded his wife of this now—how that Project Blue Book egghead Dr. Hynek blew into town with his goatee and lame explanation of “swamp gas,” which became a national punch line, with all of Washtenaw County feeling like the butt of the joke.

  “But Barry,” she said, “wouldn’t it be great for business? I know we’re usually pretty booked up in season, but still—think of the draw that would bring.”

  “But what would it draw—kooks? Crackpots?”

  “It wouldn’t just be kooks, silly. Normal people’d get a kick out of it, too, visiting the new ‘Saucer City.’ Probably off-season, even—year-round. Wouldn’t that be a super-fun weekend getaway, Barry—‘Come see the saucers’? It’d be a real novelty! We could double the room rate, I bet! Seriously, we could lend the guests binoculars, open the old widow’s walk for an observatory—”

  “We were the laughingstock, Kathy! That ‘Saucer City’ crap. The whole area. For years after, when I said where I was from, going off to school, people brought that up—‘swamp gas,’ ‘Saucer City.’ We looked like fools, Kathy. It wasn’t a great Chamber of Commerce moment in the local history, I promise you.”

  He knew she was right about the B&B. The lights in the sky would certainly appeal to tourists, to people just passing through, with nothing invested, and it would be easy enough to capitalize on that—people wanting a souvenir T-shirt with maybe an antennaed Martian on it. The sort of gawker-appeal of Area 51. But in terms of the other project, the one he couldn’t tell her about yet, it would have the opposite effect. Because living in a wacky little town was a completely different prospect from just visiting it.

  She hooked her arm in his; leaned her face in close against him, flirting. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s tell. Let’s call somebody and report it.”

  He couldn’t explain to her yet that he had a bigger plan, one ultimately much more important than her little B&B. “The whole country snickered,” he said. “No. We’re not telling anyone. We didn’t see anything. End of discussion.” He said it in a way he knew would resound with finality, finally shut her up on this nonsense, and then he bent down and lifted Oodles’s tail and told Kathy to please hold the flashlight. It had grown very dark and he still needed to check the dog’s ass.

  75

  MARK WAS SURPRISED he had to stay in the hospital. He knew he’d been banged up pretty badly, but the way Courtney had been carrying on, yelling at him like he’d done something, like it was his fault the lighthouse was unstable and couldn’t take her crazy nympho gyrations, made him think, in the police boat, that he could probably shake it off, put some ice on it. Otherwise, why, if he was really hurt, would she be such a jerk to him?

  But he’d managed to crack three ribs, sprain both wrists, fracture his ankle and break the big toe on the opposite foot. Apparently, he’d not only had the weight of the tower crashing down, he also bore the weight of Courtney. Just a little slip of a girl, sure, but when there’s a whole lighthouse falling with you, there’s some momentum. Despite the severity, he still wanted to leave. The whole thing was so embarrassing, especially since it was being reported on the news that they were boyfriend and girlfriend and, actually, Courtney wasn’t even speaking to him. She wasn’t even there. Her parents had flo
wn their family doctor in late that first night and he’d recommended a plastic surgeon back home in Chicago and she was there now, having her nose reconstructed.

  His own dad was being particularly cool about this, he thought. He’d even assured him that, despite Courtney’s ranting about suing in the police boat, he shouldn’t worry—“She’s not going to sue anyone, buddy. I don’t care who those people are. Or who they think they are.” He was being so great, really—the guy’s wife finally checks out of this place, and now his troublemaker son has to check in . . . ? Man. They were both pretty cool, when he really thought about it. And he didn’t seem to be fooling either one of them about the true cause of the accident. The doctors seemed to know, too. Though, when they mentioned it on TV, the deputy lady was telling it kind of differently, claiming they were swimming, racing from the shore to the lighthouse on a dare, that the thing finally just collapsed in the wind. Unfortunately it just happened to do this at the exact moment they arrived at the point. He wasn’t sure why she was telling it that way but it was okay with him. A hell of a lot better than being known as the guy and the girl who fucked the local landmark to bits.

  They also said they wanted to keep him for “observation”—whatever that was. Something about a concussion and the possibility of internal bleeding. He seriously hoped it didn’t mean they were going to gather around him in one of those operating theaters and just stare at him the whole time he was there. He wasn’t sure he could take that kind of scrutiny right now.

  Some nurse brought him the Weneshkeen Identifier and there was a big story across the front. Several stories actually, with different angles on the accident. But the thing that stuck out, really, was the photo of Courtney. It was her official portrait for the Sumac Days Court. They were running it early, as part of one of the articles about the accident. They said that her position would be filled by the remaining girls in the court—and so to fill it out, they were adding another girl, Kimberly Lasco (photo unavailable). It dawned on him that he had no other photos of Courtney and he probably wouldn’t be getting any in the future. In this one, she smiled the small smirk of someone who knows they’re going to be the big winner, and the pearls she wore over the open neck of her gown he recognized as his mom’s. They’d taken the court photos that Friday after he’d borrowed them for her.

  He was trying to remember if she’d given them back, when Walt and Keith appeared. The medication was making him groggy, but their appearance woke him right up.

  “He look dead to you?” Walt asked.

  “No more than usual,” Keith said. “Not dead, just not paying attention.” He pounced on the footboard and gave Mark’s bed a solid shake, which hurt a little, but Mark didn’t care. It was almost shocking, seeing them there, especially since they came together, in an organized, cooperative way, not just swinging by individually, on a whim. He wondered if they’d closed up the pilothouses early that day. Beyond them, nurses were passing in the hall, looking in and shaking their heads but smiling. Everyone knew the two veteran riverboys. It felt, oddly, like he’d had some sort of sports injury and his teammates had shown up to cause a ruckus. It was nice.

  Keith announced he had a present and produced, from under his shirt, a skin magazine called Hometown Honeys. It was still sticky with sweat.

  “Lovely gift,” Walt grumbled.

  “Hey,” Keith said. “It’s not like they sell even Playboy anywhere in this whole damn county. You gotta drive up to Traverse, you wanna see a lousy frigging bare breast. So please—this here is thoughtful as shit.” Keith scanned the semiprivate room, with the plate glass windows and the big wide door fully open, hooked in place to the wall. “Not that the kid’s going to have much opportunity to whack it in here . . . Jeezo. What is this—the Big Brother ward?”

  They sat for a while and talked about his injuries, and about a bad scrape one of the other under-boys had caused the other day, getting caught up against the drawbridge pylons and “banging the bejeezus out of The Podunk Finn.” Then Keith said, loudly, like a declaration, “Just so you know, everyone I talk to—on the river?—no one blames you or is pissed at you or anything like that.”

  “’Course not. The thing should’ve fallen over years ago,” Walt agreed.

  But Mark did not. “Courtney sure blames me. And her dad. Before they left, they were screaming about suing. My dad’s a lawyer and all, and he says not to worry, but Mr. Banes . . . you know—he’s a bigshot.”

  “Listen to your dad,” Walt said. “The Baneses won’t do anything.”

  Keith was bouncing on his heels, worked up. “They do, and they’ll come back next summer to find The Courtney has spent the winter at the bottom of the marina. And they know it, I’m sure. A harbor town like Weneshkeen, we’re the goddamn bigshots and don’t you forget it! No one fucks with us, my friend. We are the goddamn Cosa Nostra around here and you, you’re almost like a ‘made man’ yourself.”

  Walt rolled his eyes at Keith. “Worse thing in the world, the day this guy got satellite TV.” He rested his big meaty hand on Mark’s arm, near the IV tape. “Now first of all, the lighthouse? That thing was a nuisance and an eyesore. A major hazard. Everyone knew it.”

  “No shit,” Keith piped in. “And second of all, anyone with half a brain knows it was that Banes chick put you up to it. It’s that outsider bullshit all over again. Always something with them, coming in here. You gotta steer clear of those people, Mark. And I don’t just mean the Baneses, neither. It’s those summer people in general. Those boat people and Fudgies and all. Next year, you get yourself a nice local girlfriend.” He nodded, as if agreeing with his own brilliance. “I can help you with that.”

  Walt tipped his head, reflectively. “I got a niece about your age.”

  “Or . . .” Keith said, “. . . there’s also some good-looking girls in town . . .”

  Walt backhanded him.

  “Hey!” Keith said. “Besides, Ass Boy don’t need any help finding a girl. Kid’s an under-boy, jack. That still carries some weight in this town, I’ll tell you.”

  Before they left, Keith became interested in trying to pull back his bedsheets and find out what he had on. Despite feeling weak, Mark, shrieking with laughter, struggled to keep the sheets clamped around him until the older man intervened and pulled Keith off him. “What the hell’s wrong with you?” Walt said. “You trying to put him in a worse condition, get his stay extended, jack up the kid’s hospital bill? That it?”

  “No, I’m just thinking: if it’s one of those breezy, open-backed robes, maybe he could make a couple strolls down the hallway when he’s up to it, flash that hottie-winning keister of his past a candy striper or two. Get the ball rolling on the whole new-girlfriend front.”

  Walt swatted him again and Keith yelped and laughed and Mark wondered now if they’d stopped by Carrigan’s first for a few drinks. Then they were patting him on the arm, and telling him to get better real soon, that they’d be by to check on him again. After they were gone, the nurse came in and gave him a sedative for the evening and despite this, he did not nod off but lay there watching the muted Simpsons and thinking how peculiar this summer had been and how strange these two men were: he’d never said he was going to do this job again. And if he did want it, he would have had no business just assuming he could have it again next year. It was too popular a position. And wasn’t he himself one of those same summer people they were telling him to steer clear of? And when had Keith Nuttle ever called him Mark?

  He thumbed through the magazine for a time, then he did start to feel himself nodding off, whether it was from the drugs or from Keith wearing him out, and he loved the heat of the sun coming in through the window and sensed, in that heavy, underwater feeling, half-asleep, that someone was in the room. A girl maybe, standing in the door, then by the bed, and when he finally won the struggle to wake, and focus, there was something on the rolly tray thing that they swiveled over his bed. He reached out and pulled it closer so he could inspect it. There was a box o
f fudge and a card, which he opened:

  Mark—

  Sorry you got hurt & all.

  This isn’t just from me but from my dad & I both, so don’t think it’s all weird of me or whatever. It’s no biggie or anything, just to say get well soon & all.

  Your neighbor,

  Kimberly Lasco (& her dad)

  P.S.

  NO peanuts, in case your mom wants to try some.

  He wondered if she’d noticed the porno Keith gave him. Raising himself up a little, in a sort of inching, side-to-side roll that made moving only slightly less painful, he peered out at the parking lot, hoping to see her, and just then she walked past his window, the wind in her dark hair. She was turned away, looking out toward the sliver of blue beyond and to the west that was the beginning of Lake Michigan, the white snaky breakers of whitecaps that meant the big winds were coming and the rain and then what was that called—photosynthesis?—with the leaves and of course, the end of summer. It looked chilly out there, though it was still boiling out, the heat bugs humming. Still, it looked like a bad place to end up, late at night, heartbroken, crashing around in that surf out there.

  He watched her start for the bike rack, then go past it, around it, to the weedy marshy area that was some sort of preserved wetland spot. It looked like she wanted to pick something over there, that red weedy-looking plant, the whatayacallit—sumac.

  He timed her. She stood there for four whole minutes, just looking at it, like it was the most interesting thing in the world.