"That helped, when you came up empty," Lucas said. "It eliminated some possibilities."

"So I can ask," Knox said. "Now, you wanna take a hike before my kid breaks out in hives?"

Lucas left. Halfway back to the corner of the building, he turned and said, "I'll anxiously await your call."

Knox shook his head and watched until Lucas had turned the corner. The freckle-faced thief eased out of the building and asked, "What'd he want?"

"Just bullshit," Knox said. He turned to the thief. "You said nobody knows the tractor is gone yet?"

"Won't nobody know until tomorrow, when the owner gets back from Vegas."

"Can you get it back there?"

"Get it back? I just stole it," Roy said.

"Yeah, but this guy is gonna look it up, just sure as shit. If it's on a list, he's gonna be back here, and he's gonna want to know where it went. I'd have to tell him I turned you down, and then he'd come looking for you."

"You wouldn't tell him"

Knox shrugged. "You're not a real big part of my business."

"Well, goddamn, Carl"

"So you take it back," Knox said. "When does your guy go to Vegas again?"

"He goes every couple of months."

"So steal it again, then. I'll give you three thousand," Knox said.

"Three?"

"Take it or leave it."

The thief looked up at the big orange tractor and said, "I'm gonna be out fifty bucks for gas."

"Hey, Roy?"

"Yeah?"

"Tell somebody who gives a shit."

Lucas stopped back at headquarters, left a note for a guy in Property Crimes, asking him to check on stolen Kubota 2900 tractors. He looked at his watch every thirty seconds for ten minutes, then headed for a restaurant called The Bell Jar. No sign of Catrin. He was a few minutes early, but he started to worry. Maybe she'd bailed

The maоtre d' put him in a corner, where he could see the room. A waitress came by and dropped off the drinks menu; a couple of minutes later she came back and he ordered a martini. "Will you be dining by yourself today?" she asked.

"No, I" And Catrin came in the door. "I'm meeting that lady right there."

Catrin, he thought, had dressed as carefully as he had, in a light gray-wool skirt, a black cashmere sweater, and low heels. She was wearing small diamond earrings. She looked, he thought, absolutely wonderful. She read his face and might have colored, just a bit, as he stood up to meet her.

"Lucas."

"How are you?" He was fumbling already. "I mean, with your friend"

"Funeral's on Tuesday," she said. "It's over. With what she'd been through, it was time. I don't feel the least bit bad about it."

"Okay"

She smiled and said, "Did you order?"

"A martini."

"A martini? What happened to the Grain Belt?"

"Only on special occasions," he said. He looked around the restaurant, "if you ordered bratwurst in this place, the chef'd probably faint."

"So I'll have a martini," she said. "An old-time drink with an old-time friend."

And she was fumbling, he thought.

"Last time I saw younot this morning, but back whenyou were really upset."

"I remember," she said. "You were such a punk. You were unbelievable. You were also pretty sure you were God's gift to women, if I remember correctly."

"C'mon. I wasn't Gods gift to anyone."

"Easy to say now."

"You weren't exactly a ride in the park yourself."

"Are we gonna fight?" But she said it smiling, almost delightedlike something was still the same.

"The last time I saw you," he said, dropping his voice, "you were absolutely buck naked. The last thing I saw was you standing there with your fists on your hips, looking for your underpants."

"That was something you weren't supposed to bring up," she said, and now shewas pink. "Though I do remember that we spent quite a bit of time running around naked."

"Yeah. Jesus. Are we old now?"

"No, but we were definitely young then." A waiter came, gave them menus and left water, and promised to come back. Catrin opened the menu and looked over it to say, "You really made me angry, back then. I almost couldn't stand it. I never told Jack about you, and he was a hockey fan, and he used to take me to hockey games the next year, before he graduated. He was one of your fans. I remember how pissed off I'd get when you'd be skating around. Cruising around, backward or something, all arrogant macho tough asshole, smiling at the girls"

"Jesus." He was impressed.

"Still pisses me off, thinking about it." Her eyes dropped to the menu.

That was the end of the sex talk. After they ordered, the conversation drifted to their current lives.

"When you said your husband took you to hockey games before he graduated When did he graduate?"

"The next year. We got married June of my sophomore year, and he did his internship with a military hospital in Koreahe was a captain. Then, when we came back, he joined his fathers practice in Lake City and that's where we've been."

"What about you? You didn't finish school?"

"No you know. I got pregnant while we were in the army. I mean, I took classes over the years, but I never got back to school full-time. I thought about going this fall, to Macalester, but I just I don't know. I didn't go. Now I'm supposed to go this winter, and I still don't know I'm kind of fucked up." She heard herself say it, and stopped. "The last time I said thatused those words, 'fucked up'was when we were dating."

"Yeah, well, the good stuff always comes back," Lucas said wryly.

When they were eating, she said, "Things have really been good. I loved Jack right away, I wouldn't give up any of that for anything. But this is like feminist hell: I keep coming back toHow about me? When do they make my movie? I always thought I was gonna be the movie star, and the rest of you were gonna be the extras. Instead, I wind up as the one in the background who's changing diapers and doing the books and working for free for United Way.

"I thought you and I were alike, because you always did what you were going to do; you were always the star in your movie. I thought I was like that: I was always going to do whatI wanted to do, and then the kids came, and Ihad to take care of them. I didn't have any choice, because they weremine, and nobody else was going to do it, and it just made sense."

"Now they're moving out," Lucas said. "So do what you want to do."

"But what am I going to do? I have a feeling that if you want to be a movie star, in any movie, you've got to start young and work hard, and the best way to do that is be hungry all the time. But Jack started investing while we were still in the Army, and he always made good money, and you know how much we're worth now? Something like ten million dollars. That's a ridiculous amount Jack wants to buy a house in Florida, and he's talking about an apartment in Londonwe both like London, and you can get there in seven hours on Northwest So what's the point in trying to be a movie star now? To do what?"

"Not to make money, maybe. You were a painter, and you want to do photography. So do photography. Or paint."

"Ahhh" she said. "That all seems too sterile now. Everything is too comfortable."

"So go back to college in criminal justice," Lucas said. "You can be a cop. I can fix it so Minneapolis'll hire you, and you can go around and do murders."

"Really?"

"What do you want to do, Catrin?" Lucas asked.

"Not be a cop," she said.

"So what?"

"I don't know. I'm just so comfortable, everything is so perfect, that I want to scream."

He walked her back to the car. She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek, and swiveled into the front seat of the Lincoln. "By the way, the chances of us running into each other up here are just about nil, but if we dowe do get up here every couple of weeksI didn't tell Jack about meeting you for lunch. There just would have been too many questions. So if we see you"