"Sure," said Cleveland. He fanned out his hands as though to say, Why not leave right now?

"You don't mean it," she said.

"Wait till I get some money. Then we can go anywhere. We can buy a trailer."

"You'll never get any money," said Jane. She shook the dressing, then dumped it onto the salad. "Or will you?"

I watched Cleveland 's face, which revealed nothing, but when I turned back to Jane, she was staring directly at me, and I realized that I was blushing.

"That's a beautiful salad," I said.

"Well, let's eat it, Art," she said. "Come on, Cleveland, Arthur. Come eat some vegetables."

After lunch, to my surprise, Jane asked me to walk into town with her. Cleveland smiled, woodenly, and raised his can of beer to me; evidently she had warned him that she planned to do this.

"I can give you only glowing reports of his behavior, Jane," I said.

I put on my tennis shoes, trying to get up the nerve to decline her invitation. I had seen it coming at lunch-she knew something, she had heard something, she was worried about Cleveland. Arthur came into the living room, carrying a book by Manuel Puig, with a long Spanish title. He was always in love with some new Latin American writer or other.

"Where are you guys going?" he said, looking at Cleveland.

"Town," said Jane. "Need anything?"

"Can I come?"

"You have to keep Cleveland company."

"You can come," I said.

Arthur looked at Cleveland again.

"No, that's okay," he said. "I wanted to read."

Jane went to the door; I stood for a few seconds, embarrassed at having been singled out by Jane, and suddenly afraid to talk to her. But when I got outside, the Sunday was in full bloom, you could smell the lake, clouds blew quickly across the sun. I jumped up and down a few times, feeling the give of the dirt beneath my feet.

"Isn't this a nice place?" said Jane. "Next time you should bring Phlox."

"If I'd known you were coming, I would have." "I'm not scolding you. I know why you guys came here."

"Good," I said. "I know why you came here too."

"Good. Look. Way up there, a vulture! I saw a lot of vultures down in New Mexico. Aren't they beautiful!"

"I don't think they have vultures in New York," I said.

"They have vultures everywhere they have food chains," she said. "This way." We walked down the gravel drive, to the mailboxes, but, instead of taking the cracked old blacktop road, she pointed to a dirt path that led up the roadbank and away in the opposite direction from the house. "It's shorter," she said. We walked through skunk cabbage, Queen Anne's lace, cataracts of honeysuckle; she picked up a tree branch and hacked lazily at the ivy and brambles that overgrew the path. Stopping for a moment, she uprooted a frail stalk of Queen Anne's lace and turned it upside down, holding its thick brown root up to my face.

"Smell that," she said. "It's a wild carrot."

"Mmm," I said, inhaling an odor of dirt and soup broth.

I felt as though I were a vacationing child again, walking with some older cousin. When we came alongside a tiny rill, she pulled me to it and knelt down beside the sparkling water. I found a twig and broke it in two, feeling a little self-conscious but willing to try to relax.

"Let's race," I said. We tossed our little boats and watched them bob until they disappeared from view. Then she recovered her alpenstock and we set off again, until we came to a place where the creek was wider, and a plain wooden bridge took you across. We leaned over the low rail for a minute.

"Let's spit," I said. We spat. It was amusing, and we spat again. I was still laughing when she took hold of my wrist, tears in her eyes, and we were no longer two kids on a nature walk. I was trapped.

"Art," she said. "I know you know. Tell me what Cleveland is doing."

"What do you mean?"

"I ran into this sleazy friend of Cleveland's, Dave Stern."

"He's my cousin," I said.

"I'm sorry; he isn't really all that sleazy."

"It's okay," I said. "He isn't my real cousin. What did he say?"

She kept herself from crying; she wiped a hand across her forehead, blew the hair from her eyes, and then started off again. Her pink plaid shift lifted as she ran a few steps, then she stopped and waited for me.

"He didn't say anything, really. Just hinted. I could tell he was trying to bug me. He said Cleveland was working for his father. So I asked him what his father did."

"And he said?"

"He said, 'My father makes deals.'"

"And then he laughed like a big donkey."

"Tell me," she said. Three syllables.

"I don't know," I said. It sounded so much like a lie that I bit my lip. "Did you ask Cleveland?"

"He said to ask you." She stopped and brought her chin up to mine, fixing me with her eyes, and I could feel her next words on my face. "So tell me."

"He said to ask me?" Was he testing me? Did he actually think that I might tell her the truth? "He's jerking you around. I have no idea what Lenny Stern does."

"Lenny Stern?" she said.

"He's kind of my uncle."

"Is he a drug dealer? Is Cleveland dealing drugs?"

I was glad for the opportunity to tell the truth.

"No," I said. "I know that, anyway."

She looked relieved despite herself, despite the fact that she knew she should still worry.

"Well, as long as you know that," she said, and she stepped away from me and looked at me very carefully. She knew that I had lied to her, and although she chose to believe me, she never entirely trusted me again.

When we got back, Jane and Cleveland started drinking, and Arthur and I watched them fight for the rest of the afternoon. For a while I tried, without saying anything, to let Cleveland know that I had not ratted. He ignored me and seemed to be feeling fine. He stood up, inhaled deeply, and cried, "Ah, the sweet piss odor of cedar!" Eventually we just tried to stay out of their way. Still we kept coming upon them kissing within the narrow triangle made by two open doors in the hall, or in the shadow of the chestnut that overhung the front yard. At sundown we laughed at their unlikely silhouettes moving side by side along the beach. We stood by the open door, leaning against opposite jambs and smoking. Then we stopped laughing. I envied them the hands in the back pockets of each other's jeans, and I envied them their history, the plain and the frantic days, the simple length of years behind them.

"No matter how long I know you guys, I'll never be able to catch up."

The cigarette hung slack from Arthur's peeling lower lip, and I saw that he'd had his own reasons for suddenly growing quiet.

"Catch up on what?" His Kool jiggled as he spoke.

"The time. All the days and evenings like this one."

"Ah." He smiled very faintly.

"What are you thinking?"

"Actually, I was just thinking that seeing Cleveland and Jane together again makes me feel tired. You know, all the days and evenings like this one. But it can't last much longer."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean-nothing. Here they come." He flicked the end of his cigarette in their direction with an exaggeratedly formal upswing of his arm, as though firing off a salute, or sending up a flare.