Absolute rage

4

"What's wrong with you, now?" asked Marlene unsympathetically. She was bustling around the kitchen, fully dressed, having already done an hour or so of work. He was elbowing at the table, robed, unshaven, grainy-eyed, head on fist, eyeing a bowl full of raisin bran and wondering whether to make the irrevocable commitment to pour milk in it.

"I'm crapulous without having been gloriously drunk," said Karp. "It's unfair. And if you want to know, I'm feeling unmanly."

"Oh, yeah, what a pussy! You didn't coldcock a helpless drunk. I've lost all my respect for you."

"Real men drink themselves into oblivion when they have a problem and take it out on bystanders."

"When life hands you a lemon, make lemonade," said Marlene, who was in fact making lemonade and handed him a lemon to demonstrate.

"Thank you," he said, and mimed an epiphany. "Gosh, I think… I finally understand that saying."

"Good. Now cheer up. It's a nice day, you're on vacation, so vacate!"

"Even though we have a dual system of criminal justice, one for the rich and one for the poor?"

She stopped her squeezing and turned to face him, hands on hips. "Oh, please! You're not telling me he got to you with that drunken ramble?"

"But it's true. I got up this morning and I was thinking obsessively about the congressman, how to get him, strategies, how to slowly weave the web, laws I could use, pressures I could put… and then it hit me-okay, let's say I do get him. Realistically, the best outcome is, he does eighteen months, most in a minimum security prison, and then a halfway house. Then he runs again as a victim of racism and takes 80 percent of the vote. I mean, what's the point?"

The answer (if she knew it) did not come then, for the screen door crashed open and Giancarlo burst in. He grabbed two doughnuts from a box on the table and announced, "Zak shot a crow. We're going to nail it to the barn."

"No, you are not," said the mother.

"Yes, Dan Heeney says that's what they do in West Virginia."

"Fine, if you're ever in West Virginia, you can nail all the crows you want, but not here."

Giancarlo snatched up a table knife and stabbed it into Karp's bowl several times, while laughing maniacally.

"What are you doing?" cried Karp. "Stop that!"

"Guess what I am, Dad."

"An idiot?"

"No, a cereal killer. Mom, can we tape the crow up?"

"Get out of my sight! Shoo!" Marlene yelled. The boy departed, hooting.

"He took the last two chocolate doughnuts," Karp said. "Two, not one."

"They always take two, for the other one. I think it's sweet."

"But if each one does it, then they have four, and there isn't any left for me. It's not fair."

"Could you pout more pathetically when you say that?"

Karp obligingly twisted his face.

"Charming," cooed his wife. "And incidentally, that answers your problem with the criminal justice system. Life is inherently not fair." Marlene emptied ice from a bag into the two-gallon thermos. "And another example is, I have to go to work in the hot sun while you gorge on doughnuts."

The sun was indeed hot. Marlene lugged her jug of lemonade into the shade cast by the barn and set it on a rough plywood table, on which there already stood a miscellany of tin and plastic cups. Then she strolled through her small kingdom to declare a break. Billy Ireland was behind the barn working a big shepherd named Lars on the spring lead with Alex Russell. The dog was in a harness attached to a long lead fastened to a thick baby-carriage spring bolted into the wall. Russell was agitating. He came from hiding around the corner of the barn and snapped the dog in the face with a burlap sack. The dog leaped at the sack and grabbed it, at which Russell dropped it and retreated around the corner with every indication of extreme cowardice. The dog killed the sack, snarling and jerking it around. Marlene waited until the exercise was over before she approached. Ireland took the dog off the chain, snapped on a light lead, and sit-stayed him.

"How's he doing?" she asked.

"Coming along. A good dog. Nice and varminty with the sack." Ireland took in Marlene's tube top and cutoffs, adding, you are a fine-looking woman and I would boff you in a second were it not for the fact that there are lots of fine-looking women and not that many good training jobs for ex-felons and so I will wait until such time as you actually grab me by the dick before going further. But with his eyes, not aloud, which just suited Marlene, who got the message clear enough and thought (as she liked to do), I am so bad.

"There's lemonade," said Marlene, and walked away, feeling the eyes of both men on her. Past the greenhouse and the garden, through a wooden gate to what was once the pasture of the former dairy farm, a dozen flat acres of close-mowed grass. In a near corner of this field, her daughter was running their young mastiff Gringo on a fifteen-foot lead. She was giving the dog the most basic lesson, which was paying attention to the handler on the other end of the lead. As long as the dog trotted along at Lucy's left side, all was well. But when he turned to investigate some interesting object or scent, or stopped or lagged, Lucy did a sharp about-face and walked rapidly in the opposite direction, allowing the slack in the long lead to yank taut and digging the little spikes of the pinch collar into the dog's neck. Marlene watched this a few times, until Lucy spotted her and walked over, with Gringo showing his class by, for once, not having to be dragged along.

"Good dog!" said Marlene. "Good daughter! He's coming along, I see."

"Pretty well. He's a willing worker. I hope you made drinks, I'm dying of thirst out here." Lucy gestured to the far side of the field. "I'll go get Dan."

"Dan's here?"

"Yeah. You hired him and he showed up."

"I didn't expect him after last night. Besides, I hired him to train the goddamn computer, not the dogs. Wasn't he hungover?"

"He was. But he's noble. And responsible. He stumbled in at seven this morning while I was getting Gringo out, so I gave him Malo and showed him, so to speak, the ropes."

Marlene shrugged. "Well, tell him he can have a drink, too." She turned back to the barn. Lucy took a zigzag dog-training route across the field and watched Dan work his dog for a while. Malo was a stiffnecked bruiser, heavier than his brother, and Dan was doing a good deal of dragging. He was sweat-soaked; his face was an unhealthy yellowish gray.

"He's a toughie," observed Lucy.

Dan jerked his lead hard enough to pull the head off an Airedale. Malo gave him a hurt look and then ambled along in the new direction as if he had just decided that it was more interesting.

"That's it," she said. "The first principle of Kohler training: where the dog's head goes, the rest of him must follow."

"I'm used to it," Dan said. "He reminds me of my father."

They began walking side by side across the field. After an interval she asked, "Does that happen often? Last night, I mean."

Dan snorted. "Invariably. Emmett and I started jumping him when he was sixteen and I was twelve. Before that, he'd break things or knock Mom over." Dan paused and color came into his face. "I don't… it's not like he was mean or anything-just out of control. He never hit her or anything. Mom's always making excuses for him-he's under stress, he works hard, we have to be understanding."

"And are you? Understanding."

"Yeah, to an extent. It's traditional. A man gets drunk and starts fights. That's what men do. And all is forgiven afterwards. The cutoff line is does he beat the wife and kids and does he drink on the job, and I have to say Red Heeney's on the good side of that. And really, he's a great man. Words my mother taught me."

"So why does he act that way if he's so great?"

"Because he's angry at all the misery and injustice in the world that he can't get his hands on to beat up. So he beats up on anyone handy when he's got his load on. Maybe it's even true. My mom believes it, that's for sure."

"But?"

He smiled at her. "I guess there was a but in there. Smart of you to pick it up."

"Language is my game," she said coolly.

"Right, I'll have to watch myself. Anyway, the but is, I'm tired of it. I'm tired of all that like last night. And what causes it. Because it's… I don't know… finished, all that old working-class stuff. He wants it to be like that again and it can't, not like the twenties and thirties, with the union songs and the struggle. All his guys, this pathetic little union he's got there, all they want is a satellite dish and a Camaro and enough booze or weed to get shit-faced. When you come right down to it, it's a company union. Always has been up there in Robbens County. They killed all the real union guys back in '23, and since then the company's had this cozy relationship, first with the underground miners and now with the pit mine equipment operators. The UMW couldn't get in there and neither can the clean unions like the Operating Engineers. He wants classconsciousness, but the only thing they care about is if you're from here or from away, which is the whole planet that isn't Robbens County. And your family, they care about that. Are you a Jonson or a Cade boy? Or a Weames. I got to hand it to him, it's amazing he's gone as far as he has. He actually has a shot at making Weames have to steal the election."

"Isn't that, like, illegal?"

"Oh, right, legal! This is Robbens County we're talking about, not the United States. And, yeah, I should support him and all, because he's right, and sacrifice myself like he did, and like he made my mom do, and Emmett. But-okay, here's the big but-I want to just have… I don't know, like a normal life. A family you can bring somebody home to without them getting a quiz on their place in the class structure and a lecture about what went on in the mines in 1919 and how unjust and cruel." He laughed. "Right, poor me… it's so boring it makes me puke."

"I know what you mean," she said.

"Not really," he said, a little bitterness creeping into his voice for the first time. "I mean, you have this nice normal family… What's so funny?"

"Oh, nothing," she said when she had brought herself under control. "My normal family life." To his confused look she said, "Oh, forget it. Come on, I could drink a quart," and she trotted away with her dog.

That afternoon, Karp was standing in the shade of the barn, watching Ireland and Russell work another dog, a Doberman, on the spring lead. They were using a sleeve, a thickly padded device that Russell wore on his right arm. He was annoying the animal with a switch, and when the dog leaped at him, he allowed it to grab the sleeve and tear it off him. Russell then retreated out of sight and allowed the dog to chew up the sleeve for a while. The agitator had, of necessity, a sure sense of exactly how far the dog could lunge against the spring. Karp, watching, felt sorry for the dog, with whom he identified. He had been trained in very much the same way and was currently in a situation not unlike that of the plunging, snarling Doberman. After a number of such sessions, Ireland took the dog back to its cage and Russell walked over to Karp, sat down with his back against the barn, and lit a cigarette.

"So that's how it's done," Karp said. "Do you ever get bitten?"

"Me? Hell, no. Guys have been tore up pretty bad, if they don't know what they're doing. I seen a dog rip a guy's face off, once. Grabbed him on the cheek and whang! The whole thing, the whole half of his face, just come off like a fuckin' glove." He gestured with his cigarette. "You got company."

The dogs broke out their chorus as a battered, dark blue Jimmy with West Virginia plates rolled into the yard. Its left fender was pink with Bondo and its chrome was dented. A working stiff's car, Karp thought, and wondered if it was that way by design. Emmett Heeney was driving and looked uncomfortable, almost grim. The passengers were Rose Heeney and her daughter. They got out and Rose walked over to Karp.

"I realize you probably never wanted to see me again," she said, "but I had to come over and apologize."

Karp shrugged and put on a smile. "No problem. It happens."

"He doesn't know what he's saying," she added. "He's under a lot of stress."

"It's fine, Rose," Karp said, now becoming a little embarrassed himself. "You want to see Marlene? I think she was in the barn." Rose turned to go. "And I was just going to take the boys to the beach. If Lizzie wants to come…?"

Rose smiled a grateful assent. She entered the barn, with Lizzie running ahead, and stumbled on something. She paused to let her eyes adjust to the dimness. She was thinking, I am so good at this, and reflected on what a shame it was that pride could not really be taken in what was her one real skill: pretending not to be mortified, the kind of charm she had learned at her mommy's knee early, learning to lie about Mom and Dad not being available and charming the men who came about the bills one has when one is trying to keep up appearances without quite enough liquidity. She had thought that marrying a dragline operator from West Virginia, a man dedicated to the fight for justice, would have excused her permanently from mortification, but it had not proved to be the case. She had nearly stopped feeling sorry for herself-it was by now a routine, the famous Wickham shit-eating grin, a little ladida toss of the head, crude to be angry with such a one, right? And by extension with the one who had done the damage, broken the window or the jaw-although she still felt for the children, not Emmett so much, but for Dan; Lizzie was starting to be old enough to understand, too.

The dogs were barking and she had to call out. Marlene appeared out of the gloom, wiping her hands on a towel. She shouted at the dogs to shut up, which they did. Rose went into her cringe. Marlene ignored it and said, "Want a beer? I'm having one."

They went into the kitchen. Rose declined the beer, accepted an iced tea. Marlene said, "Well, that wasn't the worst party I ever went to. No one got shot and we didn't even have to call the cops. Or an ambulance. I expect you've been in situations where there were both."

Rose felt herself blush. She nodded. "Yes. He's famous in McCullensburg for it. I'm sorry. I thought, well, away from home… a civilized little gathering." She looked up at Marlene and found a colder face than she had expected.

"You're not angry at me, are you?"

"I don't know yet. Let me ask you straight: Do you know me?"

"Know you…?"

"Yeah. Do you know who I am? What I used to do? I mean, is this hanging around me you've been doing, cultivating me and so on, connected with what went on last night? You're not looking for a little help, are you? In your domestic situation, I mean."

As soon as Marlene said this, she saw from the confused and shocked expression on Rose Heeney's face that she had been off base and felt a flash of shame.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Rose exclaimed. "You think I need a… whatever you are, a private detective?"

"Not as such… calm down, Rose. Sit down and finish your tea. Okay, I was out of line and I apologize. It's just that I used to have a business-actually according to my husband, it was more of a crusade-in which I… um… discouraged guys from beating up on their wives."

"Discouraged? You mean like counseling?"

"In a manner of speaking. It was an extremely firm kind of counseling. Tough love on steroids." A blank look. "Not to put too fine a point on it, along with several accomplices, I beat them up. On several occasions I had to shoot them, or trained the women in question to shoot them, and they did."

"You mean… dead?"

"On several occasions. The point of which is that I have a rep that's still alive in the City, and of course I forgot you don't come from the City. But anyhow, from time to time, a woman drifts into my life and inveigles me into an acquaintance in the hopes that I will fix her domestic situation."

"And you thought… I mean, that I wanted you to fix Red?"

"Yeah. So sue me, I'm a little paranoid."

Rose was staring at her, wide-eyed. Then she made a couple of preparatory snorting noises and burst into laughter. After a startled moment, Marlene joined in.

"They don't," Rose got out amid the guffaws, "they don't have that kind of service in McCullensburg, but if you ever wanted to open a branch office… oh, my!"

"Yes, well, easy for you to laugh," said Marlene after they had descended to chuckles. "It's no fun turning off the desperate. But you can see where…"

"Oh, sure, I understand. But the fact is, even though he acts like a big redneck bully, he loves me and the kids and there's never been anything remotely violent between us, with the exception of subduing him when he gets out of hand, like you saw. Do I wish he didn't do it? Yes, of course, but we have a good marriage and there are worse things, which I probably don't have to tell you. As a matter of fact, by McCullensburg standards, he's a sensitive New Age man."

"What's so funny?" said Dan Heeney, coming in from the next room. Marlene had started him on the farm accounts, which were in a fearful mess, and he had fallen into the concentration stupor of the computer jockey, tweaking files and exploring the old Macintosh, until the noise of the two women brought him back to earth.

"Oh, Dan, you're here," said his mother, arranging her face from hysterical back into the familiar lineaments of Mom. "Can you spare a minute? We need to discuss something."

"The answer is no," he replied, his face sullen.

Rose said sharply, "Dan!" and then got up and said to Marlene, "Oh, God, I'm sorry, you've had enough of the Heeney family business. We'll talk outside." She went through the screen door, and after a moment's hesitation, Dan said something nasty under his breath and followed her out.

Marlene sat there, quite happy not to be involved. A little guilty, but she could live with it. She stood, intending a little discreet eavesdropping, but sat again and took a swallow of beer. She rubbed the cold can against her forehead and listened to the refrigerator clunk.

From the doorway of the barn, Lucy could see Dan and his mother on the other side of their car, just the tops of their bodies over the hood of the Jimmy. She couldn't hear what they were saying, but she could read the body language. Rose was arguing with him, her body stiff and bent a little toward him; he was turned slightly away with his face averted. Suddenly he broke away with a shake of his head and started back toward the house. His mother went after him and clutched at his sleeve, but he pulled away. Then Emmett leaped from the cab, caught up with Dan, grabbed him, and spun him around. Lucy heard their voices raised. Both their faces had gone red. Emmett shoved Dan toward the truck, Dan shoved him back, and when his brother snatched at the front of his shirt, Dan popped him one in the mouth, a short left. Emmett stepped back and felt his mouth. He looked at the blood on his hand and went at Dan.

Lucy knew a thing or two about boxing, and she could see that neither of them was a skilled boxer, just fairly decent bar fighters. Half a dozen blows traded, and a little wrestling, and then they were down on the ground, each trying to choke and pummel the other into submission. Emmett, bigger and heavier, soon got astride his brother and rained blows on his face. Their mother was screaming, now, "Stop it, oh, stop it," Lucy could hear that much. Rose bent over and tried to separate them, pulling at their clothes, their hair. A random elbow or knee clipped her in the jaw and she sat down hard. She put her face in her hands and wailed, a high, hopeless sound, like a small child. The twins and Lizzie, who had been playing with the puppies in the barn, came running out to stand next to Lucy. The boys watched in fascination. Lizzie bit her lip and was very still.

Lucy started toward the fight, not really thinking about what she would do when she arrived, but here she was forestalled by the arrival of her father and the agitator Russell. Russell yanked Emmett off Dan. Lucy could see blood all over Dan's face, and before she quite knew it, she was running toward him. She saw Emmett throw a clumsy punch at Russell, who ducked it and countered with a short, solid blow to the solar plexus. To Lucy's vast surprise, she saw her father slip behind Emmett and put him in a competent-looking half nelson. The young man bucked and yelled, but Karp was able to jam his face up against the truck and held him there, talking calmly, until, by a nod of his head, Emmett indicated he was through fighting.

Daniel had vanished. As soon as his brother was off him, he had taken off running. Lucy called out to him, but he ignored her and ducked between the house and the greenhouse, heading toward the big field, the dunes, and the beach. Lucy looked in the direction he had gone for a moment and then went to see if she could help Mrs. Heeney. Marlene was already on the job, however.

"What the hell, Rose! What was going on here?" Marlene helped Rose to her feet and examined her face. "Christ, you're going to have a fat mouse there. What happened?"

"Marlene, I don't want to talk about it," said Rose, pulling away and brushing the dirt from her blouse. "I'm fine. Just let me go home."

Emmett said, "I'm sorry, Mom." He actually hung his head. Lucy noted that he had turned from a somewhat frightening man to a sheepish, overgrown boy.

"Oh, just get in the truck, Emmett!" Rose snapped. "Lizzie! Come on, we're going."

They departed without another word. Karp and Marlene exchanged a look and a shrug. "Well! Who wants to go to the beach?" he said cheerily, got a yell of assent from his sons, and took them into the house.

"What happened?" Lucy asked her mother.

"Damned if I know. She wanted Dan to do something he didn't want to do but his Dad wanted him to, and Emmett apparently tried to muscle him."

"He wants to stay here and not go home to West Virginia. I'm going to go after him."

Lucy ran into the house and emerged a minute later with a bulging plastic freezer bag. She whistled up Gog, who emerged from the barn drinking and drooling but, as ever, game for a walk.

She followed the dog past the field and across the road and into the dunes and found Dan sitting near the place they had gone the first day.

"Are they gone?" he asked.

"Yes." She knelt in front of him and took a damp washcloth out of the bag.

"How did you find me?"

"I have an expensive tracking dog. Hold still, I'll get the blood and dirt off you."

She did so, gently and carefully. He closed his eyes and let her do it. He thought of his mother doing the same service, innumerable times, and considered in his analytic way just why this was different. He closed his eyes and let her work; he could smell the soap on her skin as she leaned close.

"There." She affixed a Band-Aid to a cut on his eyebrow. "You still look like you lost a fight, but you won't scare the children."

"Thank you. Are we playing doctor now?"

She ignored this. "What was he trying to do, your brother? Take you back by force?"

"Something like that. Emmett isn't really stupid, he just acts like it sometimes. Dad is God Almighty and I'm his play-pretty, and-"

"His what?"

She saw a blush creep up his battered cheek, which she thought charming. "Toy, I mean. When we were growing up, he was the enforcer. 'Emmett, go get your brother and make him fix his room.' He's still doing it. I used to daydream about sending away for one of those karate courses and studying in secret, and one day when he tried to beat on me… boom! But, needless to say…"

"You got him a few good ones," said Lucy encouragingly. "He's pretty tough."

"Yeah, he is. The only good part about being Emmett Heeney's brother was that he was the only one allowed to beat on me. I never had a hard look from another kid all through school." Dan paused, took a breath. "I'm not going back there. I hate it there."

"I figured that's what the fight was about. Why didn't your dad come over and yell at you himself?"

"Because he knew I'd say no, and he'd lose a point. He can't make me do anything. I'm eighteen, I have a full scholarship, and I can make enough money doing programming to pay my own way. Dad's a negotiator, and the first rule of negotiations is never put yourself in a position where you're going to lose. So he sent Mom and Emmett. That way he can throw up his hands and blame them. But the fight… it wasn't really about that. Mainly it was he made a really nasty remark about you. He made out… you know. That you were why I didn't wanted to go home and pass leaflets to the working class." Dan was starting to blush again.

"And you slugged him to defend my honor? " Before she could help it, a giggle burst from her mouth and she felt herself joining him in shameful red.

"I guess, in a way." The unfamiliar idea made Dan uncomfortable at first, but after a short while it seemed right. It was not impossible to think of this girl in those terms. Whether in fact Emmett had been correct in his surmise did not get discussed at this point.

"Well, thank you," she said. "No one has ever done that for me before. Of course, it's so rarely threatened in any way. My honor, I mean. I'm sorry you got so banged up."

"I've been beat worse." He picked a grass stem and started to chew it, then flung it away with the thought, oh, great, the perfect hick look, a big shiner and a grass stem in the mouth.

"So," said Lucy, "what now? You'll stay here? At your house?"

"No, they're all leaving after this weekend. People are coming to fix the place up and get it ready for sale. Maybe I'll get a tent and just live on the beach."

"Don't be silly! We can put you up, if you can stand us. I'm sure my mom won't mind. She likes a medieval menage-dogs, servants, retainers, children, all banging against one another and having to be straightened out. It's her fun."

They walked back toward the house by a shortcut, a sandy path that wound around the kind of slight rise that passed for a hill in eastern Long Island, and through a shady copse of pines. At the base of this hill there was a seep under some boulders where Lucy had once found dog violets, and she wanted to see whether there were any now. Suddenly the sound of machine-gun fire burst out, as imitated by a ten-year-old boy. Lucy flung up her hands, screamed, and collapsed on the path. There was more machine-gunning.

"Die dramatically," Lucy advised from the ground. Dan did an ahrrrg, staggered, and fell in a heap.

"I got you!" crowed Zak from among the boulders. They rose and inspected the machine-gun nest, a sandy notch dug out and camouflaged with branches. The machine gun was a length of three-inch plastic drainpipe.

"I thought you guys were at the beach," said Lucy.

"We were but it was boring. I was being imaginary until you guys came along. You didn't see me until I got you."

"Yes, but we weren't looking for an ambush. Next time you want to be lower down, so you're not silhouetted against the sky. They call it the military crest. Where are the rest of your men?"

Zak pointed out a few places nearby. "Uh-uh," she said, and knelt to scratch a plan in the dirt. "Okay, let's say an eight-man squad. Your machine gun is here. Automatic rifles here, here, here, and here. You wait until their point man gets here, and you open up with your automatic rifles from both ends. The enemy forms a perimeter right here, where the trail dips a little, and that should be right in the beaten ground of your machine gun. They call it a kill sack. See?"

"What if they run into the woods?"

"Well, you already mined the woods, and if you have mortars, they'd be preregistered right there. The point of an ambush is to get everyone down in the first minute. So they can't call for support."

Zak nodded, taking it in. Dan gaped. Zak said, "You learned that from that guy, right?"

"His name is Tran."

"Yeah. Dad really doesn't like him, does he?"

"No, he doesn't."

"But Mom likes him. And you like him."

"I don't like him. I love him."

Zak looked puzzled. "You can't do that. Love is like like but more."

"Actually, it's not. Like is from here"-she touched his head-"love is from here." She poked him in the center of his chest so that he squirmed away. "La coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connais pas."

"That's French," said Zak.

"That's right. You should go back to the beach before Dad thinks you're drowned and calls the police."

Zak laughed and trotted off with his drainpipe, spraying the woods with deadly blasts. They walked on.

"Wow, what was that all about?" Dan said after a minute. "Who's Tran?"

"Tran is an elderly Vietnamese gentleman. He was sort of my governess when I was growing up. He also worked with my mom."

"And he taught you military stuff? Was that all on the level?"

"Oh, yes. And from a distinguished practitioner. We did small-unit problems all afternoon in Central Park. I also know how to tail someone, shake a tail, and clear a building of defenders. And shoot."

"Why?"

"Oh, partly it was practical. My mom had a lot of enemies at the time and he wanted to protect me. The other stuff… he was of the opinion that you never could tell what was going to happen in your life. He was planning to teach literature and ended up guerrilla fighting almost his whole life. So he wanted me to be prepared. Weird, but there it is. Yet more useless knowledge in my head."

"What happened to him?"

"Oh, he's a small-time gangster now. He's a pretty awful person, I guess, but he's our awful person. He and my mom get along fine."

Marlene had no problem putting another plate on the table, after having first called Rose Heeney to tell her these plans. They had a polite conversation, like two school mothers arranging an overnight for a fifth-grader, as if Heeney violence had not occurred on Marlene's doorstep. The weekend oozed along peacefully. Sunday, Lucy whipped the twins out of bed with the cry "Pagan babies! Up! Up! Prayer is better than sleep!" and drove them off to mass at St. Perpetua's in Southold. Just after one, the Heeneys came by, with their car packed for the trip. Marlene gave them a civilized lunch at which no alcohol was served, nor were the fights mentioned. Heeney discussed dogs he had known and trained for hunting, to all appearances an affable good old boy. It was perfectly artificial, but not at all unpleasant. Giancarlo gave Lizzie an origami crane, but secretly. Dan and Lucy allowed their eyes to meet for tiny instants, but otherwise kept away from one another. When the clan left, something heavy seemed to go out of the air. Dan Heeney felt a pang of disloyalty, for he felt this, too, but it did not prevent him from enjoying the rest of the day.

That evening, Marlene put Dan in a tiny room at the end of the upstairs hall, originally the hired girl's room, as Marlene explained, and more recently used for sewing. It held a narrow iron cot, a dresser, an old Singer, and a dressmaker's dummy.

"You won't mind sharing a room with Ermentrude, will you?" Marlene asked, indicating this object.

"No, ma'am."

"Feel free to run up a party dress, if you want."

He blushed and showed an uncomfortable smile. Oh, now I've impugned his manhood, Marlene thought. Should I watch the badinage henceforth? Maybe not; the boy needs a thicker skin, and this family is the place to get it.

While Dan was thus engaged, Lucy was on the phone with her best (and nearly only) friend, Mary Ma in New York. After the usual exchange of the latest, Lucy asked, "Listen, Ma, do you know Dan Heeney? He's in your class."

"Dan Heeney the Lollipop?"

"The what?"

"If it's the same guy. Tall, golden curls, big blues, looks like an angel on a Christmas card."

"That's him. Why do they call him that?"

"Because everyone's dying for a lick. It takes something to draw us MIT girls from our studies, but he's a something in that class. How do you know him?"

"He's living in our house out here."

"Lucy! You sneaky bitch! How did you arrange that?"

"I didn't; it just happened. Anyway, what's he like?"

"Smart enough to stay in Cambridge. Manners. Eats with his mouth closed, which is not universal among the elite here at MIT, I'm sad to say. Oh, the tragic flaw. He's in love with Olivia Hampton; she's sort of a skanky, depraved SoHo wanna-be type, works in a coffee shop near here. The Human Bean? She's a singer, ha ha. Anyway, he worships her, apparently, and of course, she thinks he's appalling. What a waste!"

Lucy was not exactly let down by this news, as she had not allowed herself to rise very high up. If Dan Heeney noticed a certain cooling of her attentions, he did not show it. He was in any case used to being held in low esteem by girls he was interested in.

Karp left for the City on Tuesday, and life at the dog farm settled into a pleasant, disorderly routine. Dan often recalled during this period Lucy's remark about her mother's medieval aspect. The farmhouse often did resemble a lesser court of that period: the cooking of huge, spicy meals for many noisy people; enormous black dogs underfoot, snapping at scraps and being cuffed away from the plates; strangers arriving at the last moment, always fairly interesting ones, cops and dog breeders, relatives and priests; the dog handlers, louche, profane, and voluble, always in and out of the house, with their half-fabulous animal tales; the children raucous and filthy, bringing unwholesome objects in for inspection; oldies blaring from the greasy radio above the sink; the silence that fell in the midst of all this when Lucy bowed her head and said grace. It was as different as possible from his own family's mealtimes, which were nuclear and short, Red always having to dash for meetings, Emmett stuffing it in and jumping up to go play ball or see his girl. After that and after the intense year at school, monastic despite his best efforts, it was like living in a dream, the colors brighter, the scents more heady than in real life.

Lucy and Dan became friends. Aside from a minimal spell Dan spent at the farm office, they were together all day, working the dogs, corralling the twins, doing the necessary chores, and all the while talking. They discovered that they were both serious people, more serious than the average person their age, far more serious than the type of youth the media held up for emulation. He told her about superstrings and explained relativity to her so that she almost got it. She taught him how to say ridiculous things in foreign tongues- Help, a dwarf has burgled my kaleidoscope -in Urdu, in Yoruba, in Gaelic, and showed him Chinese poetry in calligraphy, and what the calligraphy meant and the poetry, how that whole ancient culture danced in the sounds and in the lines. They told stories about their parents. Almost all of his were about his father; almost all of hers were about her mother. They agreed that neither of them was from a normal family.

"What if my father had married your mother," Lucy proposed.

"A perfect family," he said. "Meals on time. No craziness. The most exciting thing would be waiting for SAT scores to come. And the reverse-your mom with Big Red Heeney?"

They both laughed. "Homicide," she said. "Two weeks after the wedding, tops." About religion they did not speak seriously, only in the half-joking way that friends do when one is devout and the other is not. She took him to mass once because he was curious, but she didn't ask him what he thought and he didn't volunteer anything beyond the polite. He didn't ask to go again.

This life went on for some weeks. On the Fourth of July, Karp came out and stayed for four days, and when he returned, Lucy and Dan went with him. A year in Cambridge had not turned him into a city boy. He frankly gawked: at the loft on Crosby where the Karps dwelt over the Chinese grocery store; at the continuous circus of SoHo and Chinatown; at the sort of people Lucy seemed to know-beggars, street Arabs, elderly Chinese, nuns. She would fly across a crowded street to have a long conversation in Spanish with a bundle of rags.

They went to dinner at a Chinese restaurant owned, it seemed, by the parents of a girl he recognized vaguely from MIT, and in a private room they all ate a large meal, no single item of which was recognizable to him, after which they went uptown to the ballet. She had tickets. He paid for the cab. She never had any cash; she was always giving bills to people on the street. He had never seen a ballet before and did not think he would ever make a habit of it, but the prima was certainly the most beautiful and graceful being he had ever seen in his life. Who turned out to be a dear friend of his little guide. They went backstage afterward, and the goddess flung herself on Lucy's neck and insisted that they all go out to Balthazar and have drinks. This they did, together with several of the company and assorted balletomanes. They drank a good deal, Dan being heavily vamped by beautiful people of both sexes, which he was not used to, but which he handled fairly well. He knew he would definitely not have handled it well had Lucy not been sitting there, speaking Russian to some blonde and occasionally giving him a friendly eye-roll.

After a night spent in the loft, they went back to Southold on the early train. Marlene had a worried look on her face when she picked them up.

"You need to call your brother," she said to Dan. "He called early this morning and I gave him the loft number, but you'd already left, because he called again. He sounded upset."

"Oh, it's probably nothing. Emmett spends a good deal of time upset. He probably can't find his fishing rod and thinks I know where it is."

Dan called from the phone in the office. Lucy was in the yard when she heard him cry out, "What! Oh my God!" She ran into the house. He was slumped on the old couch, his face paper white, the dead phone clutched in his hand.

"Dan! What is it?" she cried.

"I have to go home," he said in a horrible, creaky voice. "They're all dead. Somebody killed them. They even killed Lizzie."