How much would I raise? Whatever. It wasn’t worth it. If I was going to pay $2,000 of my own money, I might as well pay $2,500. Pump, George, pump.

I was beginning to tire as I reached Nickerson State Park. Drop down. Pass through the tunnel beneath Route 6A, go back uphill and head toward Orleans Center. It wasn’t much of a hill. I pushed myself harder. Go faster, George. What are you saving yourself for?

Guy my age ought to have friends he could call on. I had dozens of friends in college. A whole fraternity full of friends.

And I hadn’t seen a single one of them in twelve years.

5

.

ISTILL HAD THE TELEPHONE NUMBER OF THE APARTMENT IN New York City.

When I called, a woman made the word “hello” last about three seconds.

I told her who I was and she made the silence last even longer.

I told her that I was Paul’s roommate at Penn.

“Oh, yes.” She still did not know. She was only pretending. Being polite. Mrs. McFetridge was always polite.

At the graduation party, I had seen her talking to my mother. Or, rather, I had seen my mother talking to her. Talking and talking and talking. I had drifted over to perform some kind of rescue operation, but when I got close enough I realized my mother was telling her all about my friends the Gregorys, who had been kind enough to have me to their house in Palm Beach. Mrs. McFetridge had grown up with the Gregorys. She had known some of the Gregory sisters and wives at least since Miss Porter’s School. And here my mother was, name-dropping, no doubt making up a few disparaging comments in her effort to be en famille. I hesitated now to bring up anything that would remind Mrs. McFetridge of that painful moment. I told her instead that I had been a guest at her place on a few occasions when Paul and I spent the weekend in New York.

She responded by saying, “How nice of you to call.” Perhaps she thought I was soliciting for the alumni fund.

“I was wondering if you could tell me how I could get in touch with Paul.”

“He doesn’t live here anymore.”

Of course he didn’t. He was thirty-four years old. But I just murmured as though that was my bad luck.

“He lives in Idaho. He’s sort of an adventurist.”

I did not know what an adventurist was. She did not know who I was. Two people heaving information into the dark.

“Um, can you tell me where I can get hold of him in Idaho?”

“Well, I don’t really know. You fly to Boise and then you wander off in the woods somewhere until you get to a river. I believe he’s what is known as a river guide.” She said the last two words going uphill with “river,” resting at the peak, then going downhill with “guide.”

Mrs. McFetridge’s son had gone four years to St. Paul’s before going four years to an Ivy League school. Eight years of very expensive education and now he was a river … guide. I did not have the feeling Mrs. McFetridge was overly pleased to be telling me that.

“He likes to be outdoors,” she added. “Skis all winter, rafts all summer, heaven knows what he does in between.”

“Is there a phone number where I could reach him?”

“Well, I don’t know. Why don’t I take your number and I’ll have him call you if I hear from him? And if you should get in touch with him through another source, perhaps you could have him call me.”

“Ah, yes, of course, Mrs. McFetridge.”

6

.

IKNEW CORY GREGORY A LITTLE.

I had met her once. We had been sitting at a big round table in the middle of the floor at the British Beer Company on Main Street in Hyannis—some of the defense guys and me—when she walked in with a couple of her friends. About five-feet-four, with short, somewhat muscular legs that she was showing off in a pair of white shorts that stopped halfway down her smooth brown thighs, she was not what you’d call classically beautiful, but she caught your attention.

She had, in fact, just come off a tennis court, but there was nothing other than her clothes to indicate that. Her shoulder-length brown hair, perfectly highlighted, did not have a strand out of place. She looked cool and smooth and, if anything, probably smelled of talcum powder. Her cheekbones were high and prominent, her jaw was strong, and you knew right away who she was. She might not have been Cory, exactly, but there was no doubt she was a Gregory.

Buzzy Daizell grabbed her wrist as she went by. She went ice cold for an instant and there was a feeling that all kinds of things could happen and then she recognized who it was and said, “Buzzy!” just like any other girl and bent down to give him a hug. I watched as her arm, thin in comparison with her legs but just as tanned, just as smooth, briefly encircled his neck and shoulders, and for one moment the electricity was so strong that I felt almost as though it was wrapping around me.

She straightened up again and looked at the rest of us with an expectant smile on her face. Her lips parted and she flashed teeth that were slightly too long and blindingly white. The woman was a collection of imperfections, put together in one exquisite package. I got to my feet. So did everyone else at the table. We had never done that for any other woman we had whistled down, called over, grabbed, or greeted when she walked past.

I introduced myself, shook her hand, forced myself not to say I knew her cousin Peter, and waited while the introductions went around the table. She waved her hand at her friends, wanting us to meet them, too, and this time we all nodded and immediately forgot their names. It was decided that they would join us, we would all squeeze in together, four women and four men. Cory took a chair between Buzzy and Alphonse, and I ended up with three girls on my right and Jimmy Shelley on my left. Since Buzzy was talking to Cory, Jimmy had no one to talk to but me. Since the three girls with Cory were bunched together, they talked among themselves. Occasionally I got in a few words with the girl immediately next to me. So, where you from? Really? I was there once. Just here visiting? Ah. How did the tennis game go? Aha. Oh, yes. Oh, my. She would answer my questions and then go back to huddling with her friends.

They left after one drink. I could not say I really knew Cory Gregory.

I did know Buzzy, though, so I tried calling him. I was in the dungeon when I made the call and Barbara Belbonnet was sitting at her desk. For once, she was not on the phone herself, which meant she heard everything I said, most of which went along the lines of, “I just want to talk with her.… No, I’m not going to ask her out.… We’ve got a mutual friend, that’s all, and I’m trying to find him.”

It turned out Buzzy, for all his bravado, did not have Cory’s number. He had met her at a charity auction. They had stood in a group drinking champagne and now, whenever he saw her, he said hello and was lucky enough to have her remember who he was. So no, he couldn’t help me other than to tell me where she lived, which everyone knew was on Sea View Avenue in Osterville. But there was a guard at the gate, and don’t even think about trying to get past him just because you claim you want to see Cory.

I hung up and found Barbara watching me. “You want Cory’s number, why didn’t you ask me?”

“You know her?”

“Only all my life.”

Of course. Barbara was an Etheridge. Etheridges knew everybody on the Cape.

“You know, George, there’s lots of things I could tell you if you’d only ask.”