She drove fast, pushing her luck with yellow stoplights. They didn’t talk.

Conner didn’t know how to start, didn’t know how they related to each other anymore. He thought, now suddenly in the speeding BMW, the streetlights and restaurant neon smearing the windshield, that she was a foreign thing to him, that there’d always been more to her, dark complex secrets he couldn’t know or wouldn’t understand if he did. The simple fantasy that they’d love each other and be together and cue the sunset seemed ridiculous now.

She’d been playing chess the entire time he’d been playing checkers.

“You’d better slow down,” he said. “Cops.”

She slowed down. Glowered and fumed.

“I’ve spent a long time trying to get my life to make sense,” she said at last. “I can’t be how you want me to be. Dan lets me be myself, and that might include something ugly or perverted or something you can’t understand, but that’s how it is. That’s how it’s going to stay. It’s how I stay sane. I never asked you to do anything or change or be anything but what you are. I need the same from you or we’ll never see each other again. And, man, I mean fucking never, because I can’t have Dan come home with a black eye every night. You get me? I don’t need this bullshit.”

“How did I rate such special attention from Dan?” Conner asked. “Or does he chase down all the other guys you fuck and threaten them too?”

Conner hoped that she’d deny it. If she denied it, he’d believe her. He was desperate to believe in her, to reinvest his faith in the portrait of her he’d painted in his head. And he also realized, had to admit, that what he mostly wanted was for her to hurt, to feel guilt, feel the same pinch in her gut that he felt whenever he thought about her with somebody else.

But she wasn’t hurt or shocked. She didn’t deny anything. “Do you know why I’m always so reluctant to see you? It’s because I do love you. I love you more than the rest, maybe more than I love Dan even.”

Conner almost said something, but he was learning. Shut up, man. Let her talk. Maybe this is going your way.

“I know you, Conner,” she said. “And I know me. You’d never be happy unless you possessed me totally. I just don’t have the capacity for what you need. I’d end up making you miserable. I’d make myself miserable. We’re doomed as a couple, baby. We don’t fit. Dan tried to warn you off because I like you. I’ve always had deep feelings for you. That’s why you’re dangerous. The others don’t mean anything. They just help me push funny little buttons in my brain. Dan knows you’re different.”

“Buttons?”

“This is pointless.”

Conner said, “Take this.” He snatched a scrap of paper from the car’s ashtray, an ATM receipt. He scribbled a phone number on the back. “I have a cell phone now. Call me, please. When you’re not so pissed. Let’s figure this-”

“I’m not going to call you.”

Conner couldn’t think of a damn thing to say. He folded the scrap of paper, slipped it into the ashtray where she could see it. She’d come to her senses. She’d call. Wouldn’t she? He shrank in the passenger seat, feeling small and lost and that maybe the universe was running him over. All Conner Samson could do was sit there in Tyranny’s Beemer and get taken for a ride.

Tyranny dropped Conner back at his Plymouth, then sped away into the night. Conner stood, watched her taillights shrink to nothing. He wasn’t a crier. He’d never been outwardly emotional, but he wished he could just curl into a ball in Salty’s parking lot and blubber and blubber, great, snotty wracking sobs until he’d cried himself right out of existence.

He went into Salty’s and made himself drunk.

Sid warned him not to drive. The bartender would call him a cab. When Sid turned his back, Conner headed for the parking lot, climbed behind the Plymouth ’s wheel, and took off. He headed for his secret parking spot along the river, turning onto the dirt access road, the swamp trees a green blur in his headlights, making for the copse of elephant ears where he kept the dinghy hidden.

I’m not too drunk. I’m driving fine.

Then the rapid-fire slap of foliage on his windshield. The bump. His axles slammed the ground as he bottomed out, bounced in his seat, and bashed his head against the roof. The Plymouth dove forward, angled down sharply. The mud-brown splash against the windshield.

Conner sat, took his keys out of the ignition. He looked around. The front of the Plymouth was in the river, the trunk and back wheels still on the bank. He opened the door, and the river spilled in around his ankles. He climbed out, shut the door again. He hiked up the bank, back down the short trail carved by his rogue Plymouth.

He saw what had happened. The road curved, but he hadn’t.

He hiked back down to the Plymouth, judged he could open the back door without too much more water getting in. He retrieved the backpack of meager belongings he’d salvaged from his apartment. At the top of the bank, Conner found a clear spot, took inventory. He pulled out the Webley revolver.

Anger surged drunkenly in his veins. He stood abruptly, jerked the trigger at the Plymouth. “Piece of shit!”

Click. Click. Click.

Unloaded. He sighed, sat down again, and loaded the revolver with the metal rings that held the bullets in tight. The next time he was angry he’d want to hear some noise.

He swung the backpack over his shoulder, held the pistol loosely as he walked five minutes to the dinghy. He shoved off, jerked the cord on the putt-putt motor. He headed upriver toward the Electric Jenny.

Bad luck still had a few surprises for him. A half mile from the Jenny’s hiding place, the putt-putt motor shuddered and conked out. Conner jerked the cord twenty times before realizing he was out of gas. He was almost mad enough to blast the engine to smithereens with the Webley but restrained himself.

He reluctantly took up the oar and paddled, cursed, and kept paddling. He was sweaty and nauseous from the exertion. His bruised ribs still ached in a vague way. All he wanted was to slip into the master cabin and fall long and hard into dreamless sleep.

The narrow inlet came into view, the boat’s white stern barely visible in the nearly complete black of night. Conner dipped the oar into the water, stroked long and smooth, drifted toward the Jenny, gliding in quietly. And then, just above the stern, he saw it. The floating, bright cherry pinpoint of a glowing cigarette.

Adrenaline pumped, and Conner stood up in the dinghy, not thinking what he was doing. The little boat rocked, threatened to dump him out. Beyond all luck, Conner didn’t tip over. He aimed the Webley at the Jenny, blazed away without really aiming.

Blam blam blam blam.

Ricochets. The tambourine tinkle of shattered glass, the sound of a porthole dying. The shots were deafening. They still echoed along the river as Conner settled back into the dinghy, paddled furiously for the Jenny. He pulled alongside the boat, grabbed the rope ladder, and hoisted himself up, the Webley stuck in his pants. He drew it when his feet hit the deck, swung it full circle looking for the intruder.

Nobody.

He went belowdecks, rushing around, the revolver leading the way. Only after he confirmed nobody was hiding anywhere did he really look around and see what had happened. The interior was trashed. Whoever had been here had been merciless in their search for… what?

The DiMaggio card.

Conner wondered if they’d found it. Did they really have to trash his boat? He realized he now thought of it as his boat.

He went back out on deck, held his breath, listened. What if it hadn’t been a cigarette? Maybe it had only been a firefly. Conner was pretty drunk. Even now, with the rush of danger subsiding, his vision was a bit blurry, the revolver heavy in his hand. Maybe it was just-