"It's so nice of you, I don't know what to say. I don't want to impose. Are you sure it's all right? You're not just being polite?"

"We're not polite," Eric said, staring into his beer. "We're never polite."

Edie said, "It's easy to get into a rut up here, Keith. It would be interesting for us to have you. You'd be doing us a favor. It's just so interesting to hear your views about the country."

"Fascinating," Eric agreed. "Refreshing, even."

"You seem to have a special insight into people, Keith. Maybe because you've traveled so much. Or were you born that way?"

"Not born that way," Keith said, and raised a professorial finger. Oh, boy, listen to that Molson talk. He gassed on, couldn't help himself, about what an ignoramus he used to be- saying how it wasn't travel so much, but his experience with girlfriends, with teachers, with his high-school buddies, that was where he had learned so much about himself. Experience. And when you learn about yourself, he explained, you learn about everyone.

Eric suddenly leaned forward. It was a dramatic gesture after his stillness. "You have an artistic look about you," he said. "I'm thinking you're an artist of some kind."

"Pretty close, Eric. I'm a musician- not professional, yet, but I'm not bad."

"Musician. Of course. And I bet you play guitar, too."

Keith paused with his glass in midair; he set it slowly back down on the table, as if it were an object of extreme fragility. "How could you know I play guitar?"

Eric poured more beer into Keith's glass. "Your fingernails. They're long on your right hand, short on your left."

"Jesus, Edie. You're married to Sherlock Holmes, here." Were they married? He couldn't remember if they'd told him they were married.

"It so happens I've got some recording equipment," Eric said quietly. "If you're as talented as I think you are, we could make a tape. Nothing elaborate. Just a four-track cassette."

"Four tracks? Four tracks would be awesome. I've never done that."

"We can put you and the guitar on two tracks. Mix them down to one, and it would leave three for keyboard, bass, drums, whatever you want."

"Fantastic. Have you done a lot of recording?"

"Some. I'm not a pro."

"Well, me neither. But I'd love to do that. You're not just making a joke, are you?"

"Joke?" Eric leaned back against his chair. "I don't make jokes."

"He's very serious about it," Edie said. "He's got two machines. The cassette thing and a reel-to-reel outfit. When Eric makes a recording, it's really something special."

18

"IF you want them to die slowly, shoot them in the stomach. Put one low down in the belly. Takes them hours to die that way. And they die in agony. They'll put on a real show."

Edie gripped the Luger the way he had showed her, one hand bracing the other, feet apart, poised in a slight crouch. I feel like a little kid playing cops and robbers. But when the gun goes off there's nothing like it.

"Save your belly shot for special occasions, Edie. For now, just imagine he's coming over that hill at you. He doesn't want to talk, he doesn't want to arrest you. He has only one objective: your death. Your job? Stop the bastard cold. It's your right and duty to make the bastard dead."

His hands showing me the way to squeeze the trigger. Long bones rippling under the skin.

"A head shot is always first choice, got that, Edie?"

"A head shot is always first choice."

"You always try for a head shot, unless you're more than twenty yards away. Then you go for the chest. Chest is second choice. Repeat."

"The chest is second choice. Head is first choice. Second choice is chest."

"Good. And you always empty the magazine. Don't fire one off and hang around waiting to see how it turns out. You empty your load. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!"

I jumped a mile when he did that. I cried out, but he didn't hear, so intense he gets, when he's teaching me things. His spiky hair seems to bristle on his head. His eyes go absolutely black.

"Edie girl, you give them everything you've got. Bulletproof vest? Doesn't matter. Three of these will drop him flat- temporarily at least- giving you time to effect your escape."

"My arms are killing me." He ignores me. He's a marine. He's a taskmaster. He's a born teacher. I'm his born student. I'm weak, but he makes me strong.

"Take a breath, Edie. You take a deep breath and hold it, just before you squeeze one off. On your own time."

When Edie took too long, Eric said it again. "On your own time," then added with irritation, "you'd be stone cold fucking dead by now."

Edie squeezed the trigger, and the bang was louder than she expected, it always was. "It's got such a kick," she said. "It's making my arms tingle."

"Don't close your eyes, Edie. You'll never hit anything that way." Eric tromped away through the snow to examine the target. He came back wearing what Edie called his slab face, his stone face. "Beginner's luck. One through the heart."

"I killed him?"

"Purely by accident. He'd have shot your fucking head off an hour ago, you're so slow. Take it again. Go for the chest. And for Christ's bloody sake keep your eyes open."

She took a while getting ready, and he repeated his earlier observation. "Of course, if you want them to die slowly, you shoot them in the stomach. You ever see a worm on a hook?"

"A long time ago. When I was little."

"That's how they squirm. Unhhhh!" Eric grabbed his stomach and fell to his knees, flopped onto his back and writhed horribly, making retching sounds. "That's what they do," he said from down on the snow. "Wriggle in pure agony for hours. Pure agony."

"I'm sure you've seen it."

"You don't know what I've seen." Eric's voice had gone cold and dead. He got up, whacking snow from his jeans. "It's none of your business what I've seen."

Edie jerked the trigger, missing the target, missing the tree, and Eric immediately cheered up. He'd been in a good mood all morning; he always was when they had a guest. Having a guest set something free in him. He'd woken her up first thing this morning and proposed this jaunt in the woods, a shooting lesson, and she knew they would have a good day. He grabbed her from behind, now, steadying her grip. "Never mind. If it was too easy, it wouldn't be any fun."

"Why don't you show me? Let me watch you. That'll help me get the hang of it." The submissive act worked like a charm, it usually did.

"You want to watch the master at work? Okay, baby. Pay attention."

Edie listened like a puppy with cocked head, while Eric explained again the importance of the proper stance, demonstrating the grip, the crouch, the proper way to sight along the barrel. He was at his best when telling her things: lore he had picked up in Toronto or Kingston or Montreal. Except for a class trip to Toronto when she was in high school, Edie had never set foot outside Algonquin Bay. Twenty-seven years old, she had never lived on her own, and she had never met anyone like Eric. So totally self-sufficient. And so beautiful.

Edie's diary, June 7, the previous year: I don't know why he has anything to do with a hideous thing like me. Me with my horrible face and flat as a board. He has no idea how gorgeous he is. So lean, with ropy muscles, and the way he walks- that slight crouch- just makes me weak in the knees. She pictured his face with its fine bones, its clean lines, on a movie screen forty feet wide. You could sell tickets to anything he was in.

Like an artist, with those rings under his eyes, haunted by genius. I can see him on a cliff by the edge of the sea, with the wind blowing through his hair and a white scarf streaming out behind him.

He had come to her counter at Pharma-City with some aftershave and some Kleenex and he'd asked her for some double-A batteries and a little bottle of PowerUp.