Stephanie, despite her seeming lack of savoir faire, scared a lot of people. She had an edge to her, and while she did not say much, she tended to stare at other people rather intensely, as though she was waiting for some criticism that she knew was probably justified and for which she was already planning a response.

She and Mitch had a son, a broad-shouldered twelve-year-old with a toothy smile. One could only assume that Stephanie had large brothers, because the boy had a lot bigger frame than either of his parents. They dressed him up in a tie and one of Mitch’s short-sleeved white shirts and had him serve nonalcoholic drinks on a tray. There were local wines, one red and one white, but they were on a card table in the backyard and partygoers had to go find those themselves and then pour them into plastic cups.

It was Marion’s first introduction to the attorneys in my office and when they discovered where she worked she became the most popular person at the party. Later, she would tell me she couldn’t understand why I didn’t have more friends among my co-workers. Such fun people, she said, so convivial.

Shortly after 9:00, when Marion had drunk most of what was available to drink and pried herself away from those desperately craving a Boston job with a prestigious law firm, she sidled up to me and asked me to come with her. I had been thinking it was time to leave, but she wanted me to accompany her to the second floor. People had been going up and down the staircase all evening because there was only one bathroom on the first floor and I figured she wanted me to guard the door so she could use the facility upstairs. I didn’t think that was necessary, but I had nothing else to do, so I went.

Once on the second floor, however, Marion wanted me to go into the bathroom with her. She looked up and down the hallway, determined no one was watching, and pulled me by the wrist. “Here,” she said, locking the door behind us. The same look was in her eye that she had shown after she had fooled the cops in Old Town.

“What?” I said, hoping she didn’t really mean it.

She turned, positioned herself over the sink and in front of the mirror. She did not touch the faucets, she just pointed her hands outward, placing one on each side of the sink, and grinned mischievously into the reflecting glass.

When I did not react, she leaned farther forward, moved both hands to her hips, and slowly raised her skirt all the way up until it exposed her ass. She was wearing a satin thong. A skimpy, cherry-colored thong. Her mouth opened, her teeth flashed in the glass. “You like?”

“Marion, we can’t do that in here.” But I was staring at the thong, the way it disappeared between the rounded mounds of flesh.

“Fucking in your boss’s house,” she whispered hoarsely, looking over her shoulder. “What could be better?”

“Put your skirt down, Marion.” But I was still looking at her ass, still imagining where that tiny piece of cloth was going.

“Come on, Georgie—it will be fun.” She leaned even farther forward. She began to grind her hips one way and then another.

“Jesus, Marion,” I said, my heart beating, sweat forming on my lip. “Get dressed. I’ve got to work with these people.” I put my hand on the door handle, looked into the mirror, and saw the disappointment on her face.

It was, I recalled as I sat on the hillside above the Middle Fork of the Salmon River, the beginning of the end for my wife and me.

3

.

IEXPECTED WE WOULD TALK THAT FIRST NIGHT ON THE RIVER, but a makeshift bar had been set up and the booze kept flowing after dinner and everyone, clients and crew alike, sat around the campfire as a group, telling stories and staring into the flames. McFetridge was as friendly to me as he was to everyone else, but he stayed on the other side of the fire. A woman crew member named Bonnie sat next to him. They didn’t talk, didn’t touch, but I sensed an air of possession on her part in the way she positioned herself, the way she looked at him.

Bonnie was five-feet-ten and sturdily built, with long, dark hair and a muscular stomach, which she made constantly visible: a bikini top in the morning, a cutoff T-shirt in the evening. In the outside world she might have been a landscaper, a physical education teacher, a UPS driver. Here, there was no doubt she was the belle of the river.

THE NEXT DAY I was told I was in Bonnie’s boat. There was a rough stretch of rapids, McFetridge said, and she was going to need some strong paddlers. As before, the water was running swiftly, and in the morning I was never sure if she really needed me or not. But I sat in the key paddling seat, right front, and when she told me to go forward, I went forward; when she told me to backpaddle, I backpaddled; and when she told me to dig, I dug, setting the pace for the five other paying guests.

We broke for lunch and had elaborate sandwiches that we put together from an extensive smorgasbord of meats and cheeses and condiments, chased down by cans of beer, and then in the afternoon we hit the rapids. There was an oar boat ahead of us being manned by one of the paid crew, then our boat went next. We watched the oar boat bounce around and oohed and ahhed as it readied itself. Bonnie said to go forward, and suddenly we were skimming downstream twice as fast as we ever had before.

Bonnie shouted to paddle hard and we did, or at least I did, as a four-foot wave smacked the front of the boat and washed over us. She screamed, “Left back!” and the three of us on my side stroked forward while those on the left were supposed to backpaddle. Something went wrong. We turned too sharply and took a wave broadside. “Right back!” she screamed, and I planted the oar on my hip and pulled backward with all my might. The bow swung and all of a sudden the other side went vertical and one of the paddlers went flying over the gunwale as the raft shuddered to a halt, caught on a huge sloping rock just beneath the surface. “High side!” Bonnie yelled, as water poured in on us and the two of us remaining on the right abandoned any effort to do anything other than scramble up to where the others were. The raft shifted, the stern went clockwise, and we shot off backward, dropping almost straight down, Bonnie frantically pulling at the oars, her head turned about one hundred eighty degrees over her shoulder, searching for her lost rafter, her voice beseeching everyone to get back to their stations.

We hit something hard and it jarred all five paddlers into the middle of the boat as another huge wave hit us like a car crash. I crawled back to my position in the front and tried to paddle, tried to get a rhythm, but I seemed to be the only one doing it. Wave after wave rolled into and under us and in between swells my paddle was grabbing nothing but air. We were up for an instant and then plummeted down into a depression as suddenly as if we were on a roller coaster and once again the left side caught and snapped straight upright. There was a cry behind me and first one paddler and then another flew out of the boat. “Grab them,” yelled Bonnie, but they were gone. It was all I could do to hold on myself as someone from the left side smacked into me and went overboard. There was a scream of panic and a fifth rafter went out as the boat continued to wobble on its side. It was a man, the only other good paddler, the one who had been in the left front. I reached for his life vest, but the water wrenched it out of my fingers the moment I touched it. I threw my head back and looked for Bonnie to tell me what to do. It was just her and me. She was still holding on to the oars, even though only one of them was in the water, and she was looking directly at me without the slightest indication she knew what came next.