The phone got tired of holding only six of the required seven numbers in its rudimentary brain, double-clicked, and dumped me back to an open line. I took the handset away from my ear, stared at it for a moment, and then set it gently back down in its cradle. I’m not a sissy about the sometimes whimsical, sometimes hateful attention of the press, but I’m wary, as I would be around a bad-tempered fur-bearing mammal.

America has turned the people who entertain it into weird high-class whores, and the media jeers at any “celeb” who dares complain about his or her treatment. “Quitcha bitchin!” cry the newspapers and the TV gossip shows (the tone is one of mingled triumph and indignation).

“Didja really think we paid ya the big bucks just to sing a song or swing a Louisville Slugger? Wrong, asshole! We pay so we can be amazed when you do it well—whatever ’it’ happens to be in your particular case—and also because it’s gratifying when you fuck up. The truth is you’re supplies. If you cease to be amusing, we can always kill you and eat you.” They can’t really eat you, of course. They can print pictures of you with your shirt off and say you’re running to fat, they can talk about how much you drink or how many pills you take or snicker about the night you pulled some starlet onto your lap at Spago and tried to stick your tongue in her ear, but they can’t really eat you. So it wasn’t the thought of the Post calling me a crybaby or being a part of Jay Leno’s opening monologue that made me put the phone down; it was the realization that I had no proof. No one had seen us. And, I realized, finding an alibi for himself and his personal assistant would be the easiest thing in the world for Max Devore. There was one other thing, too, the capper: imagining the County Sheriff sending out George Footman, aka daddy, to take my statement on how the mean man had knocked li’l Mikey into the lake. How the three of them would laugh later about that! I called John Storrow instead, wanting him to tell me I was doing the right thing, the only thing that made any sense. Wanting him to remind me that only desperate men were driven to such desperate lengths (I would ignore, at least for the time being, how the two of them had laughed, as if they were having the time of their lives), and that nothing had changed in regard to Ki Devore—her grandfather’s custody case still sucked bogwater.

I got John’s recording machine at home and left a message—just call Mike Noonan, no emergency, but feel free to call late. Then I tried his office, mindful of the scripture according to John Grisham: young lawyers work until they drop. I listened to the firm’s recording machine, then followed instructions and punched sto on my phone keypad, the first three letters of John’s last name. There was a click and he came on the line—another recorded version, unfortunately. “Hi, this is John Storrow. I’ve gone up to Philly for the weekend to see my mom and dad. I’ll be in the office on Monday; for the rest of the week, I’ll be out on business. From Tuesday to Friday you’ll probably have the most luck trying to reach me at…” The number he gave began 207–955, which meant Castle Rock. I imagined it was the hotel where he’d stayed before, the nice one up on the View. “Mike Noonan,” I said. “Call me when you can. I left a message on your apartment machine, too.” I went in the kitchen to get a beer, then only stood there in front of the refrigerator, playing with the magnets. Whoremaster, he’d called me. Say there, whoremaster, where’s your whore? A minute later he had offered to save my soul. Quite funny, really. Like an alcoholic offering to take care of your liquor cabinet. He spoke of you with what I think was genuine ajkction, Mattie had said. Your great-grandfather and his great-grandfather shit in the same pit. I left the fridge with all the beer still safe inside, went back to the phone, and called Mattie. “Hi,” said another obviously recorded voice. I was on a roll. “It’s me, but either I’m out or not able to come to the phone right this minute. Leave a message, okay?” A pause, the mike rustling, a distant whisper, and then Kyra, so loud she almost blew my ear off: “Leave a HAM’ message!”

What followed was laughter from both of them, cut off by the beep. “Hi, Mattie, it’s Mike Noonan,” I said. “I just wanted—” I don’t know how I would have finished that thought, and I didn’t have to. There was a click and then Mattie herself said, “Hello, Mike.” There was such a difference between this dreary, defeated-sounding voice and the cheerful one on the tape that for a moment I was silenced. Then I asked her what was wrong.

“Nothing,” she said, then began to cry. “Everything. I lost my job.

Lindy fired me.”

Firing wasn’t what Lindy had called it, of course. She’d called it “belt-tightening,” but it was firing, all right, and I knew that if I looked into the funding of the Four Lakes Consolidated Library, I would discover that one of the chief supporters over the years had been Mr. Max Devore. And he’d continue to be one of the chief supporters. . if, that was, Lindy Briggs played ball. “We shouldn’t have talked where she could see us doing it,” I said, knowing I could have stayed away from the library completely and Mattie would be just as gone. “And we probably should have seen this coming.”

“John Storrow did see it.” She was still crying, but making an effort to get it under control. “He said Max Devore would probably want to make sure I was as deep in the corner as he could push me, come the custody hearing. He said Devore would want to make sure I answered Tm unemployed, Your Honor’ when the judge asked where I worked. I told John Mrs. Briggs would never do anything so low, especially to a girl who’d given such a brilliant talk on Melville’s “Bartleby.” Do you know what he told me?”

“He said, “You’re very young.” I thought that was a patronizing thing to say, but he was right, wasn’t he?”

“Mattie—”

“What am I going to do, Mike? What am I going to do?” The panic-rat had moved on down to Wasp Hill Road, it sounded like. I thought, quite coldly: Why not become my mistress? I3ur title will be “research assistant, “aperfictlyjake occupation as far as the IRS is concerned, I’ll throw in clothes, a couple of charge cards, a house—say goodbye to the rustbucket doublewide on Isp Hill Road—and a two-week vacation: how does February on Maul sound? Plus Ki’s education, of course, and a hejgy cash bonus at the end of the year. I’ll be considerate, too. Considerate and discreet.

Once or twice a week, and never until your little girl is fast asleep.

All you have to do is say yes and give me a key. All you have to do is slide over when I slide in. All you have to do is let me do what I want—all through the dark, all through the night, let me touch where I want to touch, let me do what I want to do, never say no, never say stop. I closed my eyes. “Mike? Are you there?”

“Sure,” I said. I touched the throbbing gash at the back of my head and winced. “You’re going to do just fine, Mattie. You—”

“The trailer’s not paid for!” she nearly wailed. “I have two overdue phone bills and they’re threatening to cut off the service! There’s something wrong with the Jeep’s transmission, and the rear axle, as well! I can pay for Ki’s last week of Vacation Bible School, I guess—Mrs. Briggs gave me three weeks’ pay in lieu of notice—but how will I buy her shoes? She outgrows everything so fast.

… there’s holes in all her shorts and most of her g-g-goddam underwear…” She was starting to weep again. “I’m going to take care of you until you get back on your feet,” I said. “No, I can’t let—”

“You can. And for Kyra’s sake, you will. Later on, if you still want to, you can pay me back. We’ll keep tabs on every dollar and dime, if you like.

But I’m going to take care of you.” And you’ll never take off your clothes when I’m with you. That’s a promise, and I’m going to keep it.