“Liar!” the girl said, sounding near tears.

“I will after this is over, later tonight,” murmured the man. “I promise I will.” The voices stopped. Nina started to rise, then heard whispers. They were embracing, kissing. Oh, great.

Now feeling the cold herself, she waited, hoping they would pack it in soon. Then she heard a cry, and the violent crash of a glass breaking close by them.

Someone new had entered the scene.

“Oh, no. Mike. Oh, my God, no.” Nina immediately recognized Lindy Markov’s voice. “What is this?”

Oh, no, was right. Nina stayed out of sight behind the stairs, stuck like a fox with its leg in a trap.

“Lindy, listen,” Mike said.

The first woman’s voice, younger and more high-pitched than Lindy’s, interrupted. “Tell her, Mike.”

“Rachel?” said Lindy, in a quavering voice.

Nina peered around the corner. No one was looking her way. Markov stood next to the dark-haired girl Nina had noticed arriving late. Lindy stood about four feet away, facing him, her hand over her mouth.

“Oh, Mike. She’s got to be thirty years younger than you are,” Lindy Markov said.

“Mike and I are in love. Aren’t we, Mike?” The girl moved to take his hand but Markov pushed her away.

“Be quiet, Rachel. This isn’t the place…”

“We’re getting married! You’re out, Lindy. We don’t want to hurt you…”

“Oh, shit,” said Mike. “Shit.”

Nina, who for all the attention they were paying to her might as well have been invisible, silently agreed with him.

“Marry you?” Lindy said, her voice shaking. Nina didn’t think she had ever heard such fury contained in two words.

“That’s right,” said Rachel.

“What kind of crap is this? Mike? What’s she talking about?”

In a high, triumphant voice, Rachel said, “Look at this. See? A ring! That’s right. A big fat diamond. He never gave you a diamond, did he?”

“Get out of here before we both kick you from here to kingdom come,” Lindy replied, her voice wobbling.

There was silence. “Lindy, I’ve tried to tell you,” Mike said finally. “You just won’t listen. It’s over between us.”

“Mike, tell her to leave so we can talk,” said Lindy.

“I’m not going anywhere!”

“Calm down now, Rachel,” Mike said, sounding remarkably composed, Nina thought. “Now, look at me, Lindy,” Mike said. “I’m fifty-five years old tonight and I feel every minute of it. But I have a right to choose my own happiness. I didn’t plan this. I’m sorry it had to happen this way… but maybe it’s for the best.”

“Five minutes alone with you, Mike. That’s my right.”

“We don’t expect you to understand,” said Rachel.

“Who are you to talk to me like this! Mike loves me!”

“Oh, now she’s playing that game, where she can’t see the nose on her face,” Rachel continued, lifting her words over Lindy’s. “This is real life, Lindy. Pay attention for once.”

“Shut up!” Did only Nina notice the menace in Lindy’s voice?

“You had twenty years! Five more minutes won’t change anything. Mike, come on. Tell her.”

But Mike apparently could think of nothing to add.

“I said shut up!” Lindy rushed toward the girl, knocking her off balance against the railing. The girl fell backward. Nina and Mike both winced at the sound of her cry, then the splash as she hit the lake.

“Lindy!” Mike said. “Jesus Christ!”

Nina searched for a float to throw to the girl. She found one, but a rope was snagged around it. She fumbled to get it loose, her fingers working clumsily at a knot.

Lindy and Mike stood by the railing, their backs to Nina, too deeply engulfed in their own private hell to care what she did. Mike leaned over the side, peering into the darkness. “Rachel can’t swim!” he yelled.

“Good!” Lindy said.

“Look what you’ve gone and done now, Lindy! My God, you just don’t think! Now, listen. You keep an eye on her. I need to get help.” But before he left, he hurried back and forth along the railing calling to Rachel, reassuring her.

“What I’ve done?” Lindy said, standing close behind him. Nina recognized that she was beyond reason, out of control. “Look at what I’ve done?”

The lifesaver suddenly fell into Nina’s hands.

“Mike!” Nina said, preparing to toss it the few feet between them. He knew where Rachel might be. She didn’t.

Mike turned to face her, putting his arms out to catch.

And Lindy, catching him completely off guard, bent down and took his legs in her hands, heaved mightily and tipped him neatly overboard. “Go get her, then!” she yelled, and the explosion of maledictions that followed was swallowed up by the sound of a second splash.

2

NINA THREW THE LIFESAVER IN AFTER HIM.

As it turned out, Mike did not save Rachel. Somewhat the worse for the champagne he’d drunk, Nina supposed, he paddled feebly around shouting her name, his voice indistinct, his image a dark blur upon the darker smear of lake.

Not too far from Mike, Nina saw Rachel clinging to the lifesaver. Apparently she could dog-paddle.

Lindy, who had put her hands over her eyes, now pulled them away. “Mike! I’m sorry, Mike!” She shouted into the blackness, into the stars, and finally into the ears of her guests, who heard her cries and flocked to her side.

“Well, what have we here?” said a tall, skinny woman with short, streaked hair, looking amused as she strolled over to the railing and looked out into the night. “Hey, Mikey!” She waved. “How’s the water?” She turned to Lindy. “What happened?”

“Oh, Alice. I pushed them in!”

Alice put her arm around Lindy. “Well, well, well. I guess you showed him. Who’s the woman? There is a woman?”

“Rachel Pembroke. From the plant. I told you about her.”

“Hair to her hips and twenty-five years old. That’s so classic,” said Alice, nodding.

“Man overboard!” an alarmed man in a silk jacket called. “You okay down there?” he shouted.

“Fine, fine,” Mike’s strangled voice replied.

“Hang in there, pal!”

A large, handsome man sporting a black tie and long hair jostled for a place along the railing. “Rachel? It’s me, Harry. Is that you?”

“Help!” Rachel replied, her voice very faint above the sound of the ship’s motor. “Get me out of here before my legs freeze off!”

Leaving Lindy anchored by a couple of concerned guests, Nina ran for help.

But the captain had heard the cries. The paddle wheel slowed to a stop, the engine drone quieted, and the boat halted. A spotlight-hauled out of a musty cupboard and hoisted by Nina and a young man with tattoos-located the wet pair in the black lake not more than a hundred yards away, midway between the boat and Fannette Island.

Before Harry could remove his shoes and jump in after them, the crew lowered a dinghy into the water and rowed swiftly out, first to Mike, who was closer, and finally to Rachel, whose hair stuck to her body and covered her face like tattered black rags.

By the time the dinghy returned to the Dixie Queen and the pair was climbing a ladder to safety, Nina had relinquished her beacon to a nearby crewman. She was standing at the front of the crowd with Paul.

Someone wrapped a wool blanket around the shivering girl’s shoulders. The music had stopped. The guests bunched together to make room for Rachel and Mike, with the exception of the man named Harry, who glared at Mike as he passed. Lindy stood off to one side like a casual spectator, drawn to the event but uninvolved. Red-eyed, with black mascara streaming down her bloodless cheeks, Rachel walked slowly over to her and stopped.

Nina edged toward Lindy, wondering if Rachel was as angry as she would be under the same circumstances. Taking deep, gulping breaths, the girl just looked the older woman over. “I feel sorry for you,” she said finally. Mike came to her side, took her arm, and they walked away together.