In the Lake of the Woods (23 page)

The exercise gave her encouragement. Simple, really. Follow the geometry.

Slowly, over the next hour, the fog thinned out into smudgy patches. The sky remained overcast, but at least she could make out the somber forests ahead. Everywhere, the wilderness seemed desolate beyond reason. All the color had been washed out of things, pale grays blending into deep iron grays; there was the feel of rain without rain, everything wet, everything sad and dreary and obscure. Even the birds looked grim—a few geese, a few lonely loons. The country had a dense, voluptuous sameness that made her wish for a billboard or a skyscraper or a giant glass hotel, anything glitzy and man-made.

The thought carried a certain comfort.

Maybe someday she'd build a casino up here. Blackjack under a plastic dome. Lots of neon. Outdoor escalators. She recalled a trip to Las Vegas several years ago. One of those do-nothing political conferences—the party was paying—and John and Tony had talked her into tagging along. Ridiculous, she'd thought, but after the first two hours she'd been hooked hard. She loved the flash. She loved the sound of dice and slot machines, the clatter of mathematics. It wasn't the money that had kept her up all night; rather, in ways she didn't care to fathom, it had to do with the possibility of a prodigious
jackpot just out of reach. Possibility itself. The golden future. Everything was
next—the
next roll, the next card, the next hour, the next lucky table. Gaudy and artificial, cheap in the most fundamental sense, the place represented everything she found disgusting in the world, but still she couldn't deny the thrill of a black ace descending like a spaceship on a smiling red queen. It did not matter that her wager was only five dollars. What mattered was the rush in her veins. The pursuit of miracles, the rapture of happy endings.

Kathy smiled out at the thick morning.

"Go ahead," she said. "Hit me."

After ten minutes a low wooded island materialized directly ahead. Ideal for a casino. Something sleek and glittery. Designed in the shape of a spaceship or maybe a fine young penis.

She passed along the island's eastern shore, adjusted the ruler in her head.

And then later, when the lake opened up again, she let herself slide back to that last extraordinary night in Vegas. A sizzling hot blackjack table, she and Tony camped out there, all the pretty chips piled up in front of them, lots of greens and blacks. She remembered a giddiness blowing through her. All evening the table had been under a cone of supple white light—hot light—a soft shimmering incandescent glow. Anything was possible. Luxury and bliss. Neither of them had budged in well over two hours.

Around midnight John had come up behind her. He'd rested his hands on her shoulders and stood quietly for a while. His grip seemed stiff.

"Profitable," he'd finally said. "Lots of plunder. Maybe it's time to pack it up."

She remembered laughing. "You're kidding," she'd said.

"But we shouldn't be—"

"
Watch
this."

She remembered looking over at Tony, smiling, then pushing out four green chips. Her skin felt hot. She was only vaguely aware of John's fingertips digging into her shoulders. When the dealer busted, she yelped and slapped the table. John squeezed harder.

"Very nice," he said.

"Very! Very better than very!"

"And late."

"Late?"

"It's getting there."

"It
isn't.
My God, they'd have to bomb the place."

"All right, fine. Just doesn't seem like you."

Tony looked up with a rubbery sallow smile. "And which
you
is that? Seems to me she's got yous galore. Yous here, yous there."

"Does she?"

"Yes, indeed. She does."

There was a hesitation before John forced an equivocal little laugh.

"I don't get the point."

"Well, no," Tony said.

She remembered John's hands slipping off her shoulders. He made the stale laughing sound again and moved off into the crowd.

"Forget it," Tony said.

"I will. I have."

"Doesn't mean anything."

"Of course not."

They played another few minutes, watching their chips flow back across the table, then they cashed in and moved
into a noisy leather-cushioned bar and ordered drinks. Even with the cold streak, she was more than eight hundred dollars ahead, yet all she could feel was the hurt in her stomach. The casino was just a casino again.

"Cards come, cards go," Tony said. He looked at her attentively. "That's the world. It wasn't his fault."

"Bastard."

"He's not."

"It's still rotten," she said. "Like he can't tolerate things going right."

"There's that wad in your purse."

"It isn't money."

"No?"

"Not at all. Something better." She was conscious of the resentment in her voice, a sticky bitterness that clung to the roof of her mouth. "I mean, the whole feeling was incredible, wasn't it? Awesome and perfect. Like we had this—I don't know—like there was this spell or something."

"It wasn't a spell. It was luck."

"Either way. We made a wonderful team."

Tony looked down into his drink, stirred it with the tip of a thumb. "Right," he said, "but I wouldn't knock the money."

"It just
felt
good, that's all. Then he ruins everything, just breaks the spell."

"Not intentionally."

"Who knows?"

"It's who he is," Tony said. "His character."

"Let's not talk about it."

"What then?"

"Something good. The glow."

"It was a good long winning glow."

"Yes," Kathy said.

"We could try again."

"In a while. I like sitting here."

She remembered Tony making a short humming sound like a computer processing a new piece of data. His quick little eyes flicked out across the casino. Nervous, she thought, or apprehensive about something, the way his gaze never quite settled on any one object. An odd creature. Coarse and shy and cynical and vain and rude and insecure to the point of self-hatred. The elements didn't coordinate. Like the way he was dressed now, the corduroy suit pants and pink sport shirt and scuffed-up black shoes. Funny, but mostly sad. The shirt seemed to add another twenty pounds to his belly. His hair had been slicked straight back, thin and colorless.

Bizarre, that was the word. Especially the eyes. Always darting here and there, always seeking out the angles.

When he spoke, though, his voice was mild and thoughtful. He didn't look at her.

"I guess the thing to bear in mind," he said, "is that your significant other doesn't place a whole lot of faith in lady luck. Doesn't believe in risk. The magician in him. Likes to rig up the cards. Luck's irrelevant."

"You're defending him?"

"No. I wouldn't put it that way."

"How would you put it? I'm interested."

"Just his mode," Tony said. He finished his drink. "You're married to the guy."

"Well, yes. That's another thought." She looked across the casino to where John stood with a group of young legislators. All of them fresh-faced. All very spiffy and cologned and neatly barbered.

"Anyway," she said, "he's not a card rigger."

"Whatever you wish."

"He's not."

"Another drink?"

"Sure, a big one. He's not a cheat."

Tony looked up and smiled, but his gaze seemed to slip off her forehead. He chuckled.

"No, I suppose not. Slay the dragons, feed the poor. And I admire that. Thing is, he doesn't care much for losing." He leaned back heavily in his chair. "Like with his hobby. The man yanks a rabbit out of a hat, you don't yell cheater, do you? You
know
it's a trick. It's
supposed
to be a trick. All you do is clap like crazy and think, Hey, what a clever fucker. Same with politics. Bunch of tricksters, they're all making moves." He paused and grinned at her. "Dirty isn't operative. Nature of the show."

"And you too?"

He smiled. "The trusty assistant. Help with the props. Load him up with bunnies."

"But you adore it. The intrigue."

"Sadly, sadly. I do adore it."

"And John?"

"My lord and master." Tony sighed. He waved at a waiter and turned his glass upside down on the table. "My David Copperfield. Maybe someday he'll whisk me off to Washington, we'll play the big show together."

"Go solo," Kathy said. "Be a star."

"Yeah, right."

"Seriously."

Tony rolled his eyes. "Very astute. I'd look real supersvelte in Copperfield's duds. Tight pants, spangled vest."

"That's ridiculous."

"What is?"

"Nobody cares."

He made a short, almost angry sound. "
If what?
If I need a periscope to find my own dick? Guys like me—the waddlers—we know our place. And don't give me any crap about losing weight."

"I won't."

"It was halfway out your mouth." She nodded at him. "You're right."

"Okay. I'm right."

"So?"

"So nothing."

"Time out," she said, and covered his hand with hers. "I'm sorry. Let's just be nice to each other. Where's that waiter?"

"Right. The waiter."

"I am sorry."

"Elegant astute Kathleen."

For the next hour they did what they could to retrieve the glow. She remembered curious little details. His pink shirt clinging to the curve of his belly. How he couldn't keep his hands still. How he kept stirring his drinks and letting his eyes skate across her face and down the slope of her shoulders and then off into the dark behind her.

Even now, looking out across the flat gray lake, she could feel the discomfort behind his gestures, the way he'd covered himself up with banter and cynicism.

Odd creature, she thought again. Bizarre.

Adjusting the tiller slightly, Kathy nudged the boat up against the ruler in her head. The fog now had mostly lifted. A shapeless white sun hung behind clouds to the east, hazy and without heat. Here and there patches of metallic blue glinted among the waves. No rain, she thought. At least there was that. But the morning seemed even colder now, a ragged cutting cold like barbed wire. She felt some fleeting nostalgia
for her morning fire. A mistake to have left it behind. Probably a bad mistake.

Then she told herself not to think about it.

Anything else.

What day was it?

September something—the 20th probably. Or the 21st. Which meant it was still summer by the calendar. She wouldn't freeze. The odds could be beaten. And she would do it—she'd feel that glow again. Yes, she would. With John, too. She loved him so much, despite everything, just so much. She always had. But they used to have that astonishing glow all around them. It was where they used to live, inside a brilliant white light that seemed to suck them up and carry them beyond all the ordinary limits. Suspended there. That was the exact feeling. Other marriages might go stale, but not theirs, because the law of averages had been suspended, or they were suspended above the averages. A few elections to win, then a few more, and then they'd have the beautiful lives they wanted and deserved—they had wagered on it, they had bet the baby in her stomach—but then the glow had gone away and they had lost very badly and apparently they were still losing.

She wanted the feeling back. She wanted to believe again, just to hope and keep hoping.

Kathy closed her eyes briefly. When she looked up, a cluster of starkly silhouetted islands lay a quarter mile off the bow, the lake breaking into six narrow channels that arrowed off into the wilderness like spokes on a wheel.

She checked her direction against the sun and chose a passage that seemed to run south.

Go with the glow.

Flow with the glow.

And then she permitted herself a little smile. She recalled how in Vegas that night, after three or four drinks, Tony had explained in great drunken detail how luck wasn't something you could force. All you could do, he'd said, was open yourself up like a window and wait for fortune to blow in. And then they'd talked about stuck windows. Tony suggested she unstick herself. So she'd shrugged and said she had tried it once but the unsticking hadn't gone well. Very badly, she told him. She did not say Harmon's name, nor anything about what had happened at Loon Point, but she explained that in the end the unsticking got awfully sticky. Unpleasant outcome, she said. Thoroughly busted. No glow at all. Tony had listened to this with his eyes off elsewhere, and when she was finished he nodded and said, "I get the point," and she said, "No point, I'm afraid." She asked if he wanted to know more. He said no thanks. Maybe he knew anyway. Probably so. But he didn't know about the pain and misery, so she told him that part. She told him how she couldn't sleep for many months afterward. She told him that it was a very terrible unsticking thing she had done, and that after it was over, all she'd wanted was to keep it secret, but the secret had soon become worse than the terrible thing itself.

"So he found out?" Tony said.

"Some. Not all."

"And then?"

"Weeping, horror. I was holy, he said. My tongue, my in-sides. Our us. He'd be gone forever if it happened again."

"Will it? Again?"

"Well, there's a question." She remembered shaking her head, then standing up. "I shouldn't be bothering you. Stupid of me."

"No bother."

"But still stupid. Come on, let's try our luck."

They played for another hour, mostly losing, then took the elevator up to the eighth floor. At her door Tony said, "I'd kiss you if I weren't such a pork chop," and she'd laughed and said, "Good thing," and kissed his cheek, and Tony said, "I'll live forever."

"Good night," she said.

"Oh, yes."

She opened the door and watched him move off down the corridor.

Inside, John lay cradling a pillow in the dark. His breathing was the forced, wakeful kind. Pretending to sleep—it was something he would do. She remembered undressing and pulling the blankets back and lying down beside him without touching his skin. Tired of trying. All that trying. Not now. He could touch himself. She rolled onto her side and lay there for a long while listening to the afterhum of the casino, watching the bright chips accumulate in front of her. She'd won close to seven hundred dollars. A week's pay. But truly it was not the money that mattered. It was the distant glitter of everything that was possible in the world, the things she had always wanted for herself and could not name and called happiness because there was no other word. Maybe she'd counted too much on John to help name the things. Maybe so. It didn't feel that way. It felt like something else, like climbing a mountain that rose into the clouds and had no top and no end. It felt like work. The playfulness wasn't there, the fun they used to have. She thought about the way they had once played Dare You in the corner booth of that cozy bar back in college, how they had risked things and challenged each other and made good on the challenges. There was a glow then. They couldn't lose.