“Will somebody get that boy laid?” Joley says. “He’s a walking gland.”

We watch Hadley stand (almost) and make his way towards the red-leather girl. He uses the backs of chairs and other people to steer by. He makes it all the way to the bar stool next to her, and then turns to look at us. He mouths, Watch this . Then he taps the girl on her shoulder and she looks at him, grimaces, and flips the olive into his face.

Hadley reels back to our table. “She loves me.”

“So your sister will be getting here soon?” I ask. I haven’t any idea, really. Joley brought it up once, and that was it.

“I figure five more days, maybe.”

“You looking forward to seeing her?”

Joley sticks his thumb into the neck of an empty green bottle. “Like you don’t know, Sam. It’s been so damn long, with her out in California.”

“You guys pretty tight?”

“She’s my best friend.” Joley looks up at me and his eyes are bare, the way they get that makes people so uncomfortable around him.

Hadley sits with his cheek pressed into the table. “But is she a babe? That’s the question.”

Joley pulls Hadley’s head up by a chunk of hair. “You know who’s a babe? I’ll tell you who’s a babe. My niece. Rebecca. She’s fifteen, and she’s gonna be a knockout.” He lets Hadley’s face fall back down, slapping against the formica.

“Jailbait,” Hadley murmurs.

I look at Hadley. “You gonna get sick, Hadley? Do you need to get to the john?”

Hadley tries to shake his head without lifting it off the table. “What I really need, is another beer.” He waves his hand in the air. “Gar-konn!”

“That’s garÁon, you idiot. He’s pathetic,” I say to Joley, like I do every week.

“So tell me about this Jane.” Someone’s got to hold up a conversation.

“Number one, she’s on the run. I figure her husband will show up at the orchard some time after she gets there.”

“That’s nice,” I say, sarcastic. “Nothing like a scandal in Stow.”

“It’s not anything like that. The guy’s an asshole.”

“What are we talking about?” Hadley says.

I pat him on the shoulder. “Go back to sleep,” I say. “But isn’t he a famous asshole?”

“I guess.” Joley rolls his empty beer bottle on its side. “That doesn’t make him any less of an asshole.”

“If he’s such an asshole why is he coming after her?”

“Because she’s a babe,” Hadley says, “remember?”

“Because he doesn’t know how to let go. He doesn’t understand that she’d be better off without him because he doesn’t know how to think about anything but himself.”

Joley looks at Hadley, who says, “This is too fucking deep,” and leaves to go to the bathroom.

“Sounds like a soap opera to me,” I say. “Couldn’t she just have stopped off in Mexico for a divorce?”

“She can’t do anything until she comes here and talks to me. This hasn’t only got to do with Oliver. This has to do with us, when we were kids, and the whole way she grew up. She needs me,” Joley says, and for his sake I hope she does.

I am trying so hard not to pass judgment on Joley’s sister. I mean, I don’t even know her, right? And for all practical purposes I should feel about her the same way I feel about Joley. Joley’s proven himself. He loves to watch things grow, same as me. But every time I picture his sister, I see her like every other girl who looked down her nose at where I came from; what I wanted to be.

A little while after Joley started to work at the orchard we realized I had dated a girl, Emily, who lived two houses down the street from him as a kid. She had long black hair that hung to her waist and eyes like emeralds, and to top it all off, she had tits like a Playboy bunny’s. I was watching her at a hardware store, and she asked if I could help her with the difference between a nut and a bolt. I now suspect this was all a ploy. Of course I took her home and on that street where Joley was growing up, she gave me my first hand job.

Emily invited me to a party at some friend’s house. I remember I came wearing the clothes I wore for church, and she was dressed in this skin-tight purple skirt. I spent the first two hours of this party gawking at the cathedral ceilings and stained glass windows of this mansion. Then Emily grabbed me and asked me to dance. She pushed us into the middle of this parquet floor, next to another couple. She wheeled me around so I was looking into the face of a tall guy in a tennis sweater, and then she burst into tears. “You see what you’ve done to me!” I thought she was talking to me, and I looked down to see if I was stepping on her feet. But she was talking to this guy, who it turned out had dumped her a couple of weeks before. “Because of you,” she cried, “look at what I have to go out with!”

What, not who. I stopped dancing with her there and then, and with all those rich kids looking at me like I had three heads, I ran out the heavy beautiful door of that house and drove back to Stow. Joley mentioned that Emily’s older sister and Jane were friends. That they all moved in the same circles. It is quite possible Jane was even at that party.

This is what comes to mind when Joley brings up his sister: that maybe she saw me, and will walk up to me the minute she sets foot on my orchard, and laugh her head off. “Aren’t you-?” she’ll say, and on my own land, she’ll make me feel as worthless as I did when I was just a kid.

“Earth to Sam,” Hadley says, coming back from the bathroom. He’s got the red-leather girl in tow. “Look who wants to buy us all beers.” He winks at the girl. “I’m just kidding. I told her you wanted to buy her a beer.”

“Me.” I smile at the girl. “Um. I-I-”

“He’s engaged,” Joley says. “This is his bachelor’s party.”

“Oh,” says the girl. “A kind of Last Supper?” She leans across the table. “

I’m not getting married, though,” says Hadley.

“Look, the truth is, I’m not getting married. The truth is, he’s going to blow a fuse unless you dance with him. He’s likely to become violent. Please do us this one small favor.” Hadley, on cue, drops to his knees and assumes a begging position.

The girl laughs and grabs Hadley’s hand. “Come on, Fido.” She looks at me as she’s leaving. “You owe me one, and don’t think I’m not going to collect.”

Joley and I watch Hadley dancing with the red-leather girl. The music is Chubby Checker’s “Twist,” but Hadley is slow dancing. His face is buried in the girl’s neck. It is difficult to see if he is standing, or if she is holding him up.

After the dance, the girl slips away in the direction of the bathrooms and Hadley comes back over to us. “She’s in love with me,” he says. “She told me.”

“We gotta get him out of here before he fathers a child,” I tell Joley.

“Hey,” Joley says, “I never got to tell my stupid joke.”

Hadley and I look at each other. There’s always time for another stupid-bar joke.

“Okay.” Joley rubs his hands together. “There are these three strings, standing outside a bar.”

“Strings?”

“Yeah, strings. And they want a drink. So the first string goes into the bar and hops onto the bar stool and says to the bartender, ‘Good evening, sir. I’d like a drink.’ The bartender says, ‘I can’t serve you. You’re a string!’ and he kicks him out of the bar.”

“A string,” Hadley says, “I love it.”

“The second string goes into the bar, and decides to try another approach. He sits down on the stool and slams his fist on the table and says to the bartender, ‘Gimme a drink, Goddammit!’ And the bartender looks at him and laughs and says, ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t serve you. You’re a string.’ And he boots this guy out of the bar too.”

The red-leather girl comes back and sits on Hadley’s lap.

“So by now the third string sees what’s going on. He looks at his two friends and says, ‘I’ve got it.’ Then he reaches up by his head and unravels himself a little and then he twists himself up. He walks into the bar and sits upon the bar stool. ‘Hi,’ he says to the bartender, ‘I’d like a drink.’ And the bartender sighs and says, ‘Look, I’ve told you once, I’ve told you twice. I can’t serve you. You’re a string.’ And the string takes offense. He squares his shoulders. He looks the bartender in the eye. And he says, ‘I’m a frayed knot!’ “ Joley starts to crack up. “You get it? I’m afraid not ?”