"Have you had any run-ins with Charles Kelley yet?" Kevin asked David.

"Not at all," David said with surprise. "We've gotten along fine. In fact just this week I met with Kelley and the CMV quality management director from Burlington. They were both complimentary about the responses patients had given on forms asking them to evaluate care and satisfaction."

"Ha!" Kevin laughed scornfully. "Quality management is a piece of cake. Wait until you have your utilization review. It usually takes two or three months. Let me know what you think of Charles Kelley then."

"I'm not concerned," David said. "I'm practicing good, careful medicine. I don't give a hoot about the bonus program concerning hospitalization and I'm certainly not in the running for one of the grand prize trips to the Bahamas."

"I wouldn't mind," Kevin said. "I think it's a good program. Why not think twice before hospitalizing someone? Patients around here follow your orders. People are better off home than in the hospital. If the hospital wants to send Nance and me to the Bahamas, I'm not going to complain."

"It's a bit different for ophthalmology than for internal medicine," David said.

"Enough of this medical talk," Gayle Yarborough said. "I was just thinking we should have brought the movie The Big Chill. It's a great movie to watch with a group like this."

"Now that would stimulate some discussion," Nancy Yansen said. "And it would be a lot more stimulating than this medical drivel."

"I don't need the movie to think about whether I would be willing to let my husband make love to one of my friends so she could have a baby," Claire Young said. "No way, period!"

"Oh, come on," Steve said, sitting up from his slouch. "I wouldn't mind, especially if it were Gayle." He reached over and gave Gayle a hug. Gayle was sitting next to him. She giggled and pretended to squirm in his arms.

Trent poured a bit of beer over the top of Steve's head. Steve tried to catch it with his tongue.

"It would have to be a desperate situation," Nancy Yansen said. "Besides, there's always the turkey baster."

For the next several minutes everyone except David and Angela doubled up with laughter. Then followed a series of off-color jokes and sexual innuendoes. David and Angela maintained half smiles and nodded at punch lines, but they didn't participate.

"Wait a minute, everybody," Nancy Yansen said amid laughter after a particularly salacious doctor's joke. She struggled to contain herself. "I think we should get the kids off to bed so we can have ourselves a skinny dip. What do you say?"

"I say let's do it," Trent said as he clicked beer bottles with Steve.

David and Angela eyed each other, wondering if the suggestion was another joke. Everyone else stood up and started calling for their children who were still down on the dock fishing in the darkness.

Later in their room as Angela washed her face at the wall sink she complained to David that she thought the group had suddenly regressed to some early, adolescent stage. As she spoke they both could hear the rest of the adults leaping from the dock amid giggles, shouts, and splashing.

"It does smack of college fraternity behavior," David agreed. "But I don't think there's any harm. We shouldn't be judgmental,"

"I'm not so sure," Angela said. "What worries me is feeling that we're in a John Updike novel about suburbia. All that loose sexual talk and now this acting out makes me uncomfortable. I think it could be a reflection of boredom. Maybe Bartlet isn't the Eden we think it is."

"Oh, please!" David said with amazement. "I think you're being overly critical and cynical. I think they just have an exuberant, fun-loving, youthful attitude toward life. Maybe we're the ones with hang-ups."

Angela turned from the sink to face David. Her expression was one of surprise, as if David were a stranger. "You're entirely welcome to go out there naked and join the Bacchanalia if you so desire," she said. "Don't let me stop you!"

"Don't get all bent out of shape," David said. "I don't want to participate. But at the same time I don't see it in such black and white terms as you apparently do. Maybe it's some of your Catholic baggage."

"I refuse to be provoked," Angela said, turning back to the sink. "And I specifically refuse to be baited into one of our pointless religious discussions."

"Fine by me," David said agreeably.

Later when they had gotten into bed and turned out the light the sounds of merriment from the dock had been replaced by the frogs and insects. It was so quiet they could hear the water lapping against the shore.

"Do you think they're still out there?" Angela whispered.

"I haven't the faintest idea," David said. "Moreover I don't care."

"What did you think of Kevin's comments about Dr. Portland?" Angela asked.

"I don't know what to think," David said. "To be truthful, Kevin has become somewhat of a mystery to me. He's a weird duck. I've never seen anyone carry on so much about getting bumped in the nose in a pickup basketball game."

"I found his comments unsettling to say the least," Angela said. "Thinking about murder in Bartlet even for a second leaves me strangely cold. I'm beginning to have this uncomfortable nagging feeling that something bad is going to happen, maybe because we're too happy."

"It's that hysterical personality of yours," David said, half in jest. "You're always looking for the dramatic. It makes you pessimistic. I think we're happy because we made the right decision."

"I hope you are right," Angela said as she snuggled into the crook of David's arm.

Traynor pulled his Mercedes off the road and bumped across the field toward the line of cars parked near a split-rail fence. During the summer months, the fairgrounds beyond the fence were used most often for crafts fairs, but today Traynor and his wife, Jacqueline, were headed there for the eighth annual Bartlet Community Hospital Labor Day picnic. Festivities had begun at nine starting with field day races for the children.

"What a way to ruin a perfectly good holiday," Traynor said to his wife. "I hate these picnics."

"Fiddlesticks!" Jacqueline snorted. "You don't fool me for a second." She was a petite woman, mildly overweight, who dressed inordinately conservatively. She was wearing a white hat, white gloves, and heels even though the outing was a cookout with corn, steamed clams, and Maine lobster.

"What are you talking about?" Traynor asked as he pulled to a stop and turned off the ignition.

"I know how much you love these hospital affairs, so don't play martyr with me. You love basking in the limelight. You play your part of Mr. Chairman of the Board to the hilt."

Traynor eyed his wife indignantly. Their marriage was filled with antagonism, and it was his routine to lash back, but he held his tongue. Jacqueline was right about the picnic, and it irritated him that over their twenty-one years of marriage, she'd come to know him so well.

"What's the story?" Jacqueline asked. "Are we going to the affair or not?"

Traynor grunted and got out of the car.

As they trudged back along the line of parked cars, Traynor saw Beaton who waved and started to come to meet them. She was with Wayne Robertson, the chief of police, and Traynor immediately suspected something was wrong.

"How convenient," Jacqueline said, seeing Beaton approach. "Here comes one of your biggest sycophants."

"Shut up, Jacqueline!" Traynor snarled under his breath.

"I've got some bad news," Beaton said without preamble.

"Why don't you head over to the tent and get some refreshments," Traynor told Jacqueline. He gave her a nudge. After she tossed Beaton a disparaging look, she left.