“Something you think I know about.”

The Adam’s apple went up and down again. It had now been several minutes since Buzzy looked my way. “Something other people know about. Something I don’t think you do.”

There was a little fluttering in my heart, a cold bolt that went down my spine. The things that went through my mind were all things that should not have affected Buzzy Daizell in any possible way.

The words burst out of his mouth as if he could not wait any longer. “I had an affair with Marion,” he said.

I looked at the top of my beer can and wondered if I should drink some more. “We’ve been divorced for some time,” I said.

“It was while you were married.”

“I see.” I could trace my finger all around the top of the beer can, let it follow the inside of the rim, fall into the hole, pop out again.

“Sometimes I would go up to see her in Boston. Sometimes, toward the end of when you guys were together, when she didn’t come down on weekends, it was because she was seeing me up there.”

“In her apartment.”

“Yeah.”

“When she said she had to work.”

“Yeah.”

“Well,” I said, “things were coming apart anyhow.” Except I wanted to crush the beer can.

Order had been restored on the field. The new pitcher was heading to the mound to start his warmup tosses. A pinch runner was trotting out to first base.

“This is like full disclosure, George. I mean, if this stuff comes out, you’re going to hear about it and, well, I didn’t want that to be the way it was.”

“You didn’t want the Cape Cod Times calling me up and asking for a comment, huh?”

“I don’t know.”

“I mean, you’re not asking my permission or anything. You’re telling me you’re going to do this and I should be prepared, is that it?”

“Well, you might say you were separated.”

“You want me to cover up the fact that you were having sex with my wife by saying we were separated?”

“She told me things weren’t going particularly well for you guys in that department.”

I may have stopped breathing for an instant. There was a constriction in my chest and my entire body went very cold and then very hot. I wondered if my friend had just offered me an excuse or issued a quid pro quo.

“Except we weren’t separated.”

“Not all the time,” he said. “Except, you know, for her being in Boston—”

I tried to absorb all this information. Tried to parse it out. I kept coming back to the part where she told him things weren’t going particularly well between us sexually. “Anything happen between you two when I was around?”

“One time.”

“When?”

“You guys had us over for dinner.”

“ ‘Us?’ ”

“Me. Jimmy Shelley and his girlfriend. Alphonse and his wife, Caroline.” He took a breath. “You were out in the backyard barbequing and we did something in the bathroom.”

“Who did?”

“Marion and me.”

I didn’t know if I wanted to ask another question. I didn’t know if I wanted to sit there one instant longer. Everything around me was a blur. The only thing I could sense distinctly was the spinning blade churning its way through my stomach.

“Well, she did something, really.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Buzzy.”

People hanging over the fence turned to look in our direction.

Buzzy covered his face. He may have done it because he was ashamed, or maybe because he didn’t want the people to recognize him, remember this blasphemy when he started his campaign.

“Did they know? Jimmy and Alphonse?”

“Jimmy, man.” Buzzy spoke from behind his hands. “He saw her follow me in. He opened the door. He saw it.”

I leaned over. I tipped the lawn chair so it was up on one side, nearly touching his with the other. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted him to hear how rotten this really was. “You’re telling me Jimmy saw you screwing my wife while I was barbequing?”

“We weren’t screwing.”

I waited, hoping I had misunderstood his confession, hoping this was not going to be so bad as I had thought.

“She was … you know … down on her knees.”

“Jimmy Shelley saw my wife giving you a blow job?”

“It wasn’t my idea, Georgie,” he yelped, his face still hidden. “I think she liked the risk, man. I think she liked the possibility she might get caught.”

I slowly eased my chair back into its former position. I had gone from wanting to hurt Buzzy to wanting to say something in my own defense, something to overcome my inadequacies. “She usually liked doing other things in bathrooms.”

Sensing a reprieve, Buzzy lowered his hands. “Tell me about it, man. She wanted to do it in the restroom of the fucking Locke-Ober restaurant one time.”

I sat very still, thinking of Buzzy and Jimmy and probably Alphonse knowing what my wife had done. Not telling me. Just knowing. “Well, thanks for letting me know,” I said softly.

“I’m sorry, Georgie.”

I stood up then. Play had resumed on the field, but Buzzy was watching me, his face in total disarray, as if he had no idea what I was going to do, what he should do: stand up with me, beg for forgiveness, ask for another affirmation of loyalty from me, his cuckolded friend.

“Thank you for the beer,” I said, and left him looking like one of those people who are always at the foot of the cross in Renaissance paintings, gazing up in total mystification, wondering what is to become of them.

2

.

ICOULD NOT BLAME MARION FOR HAVING A MISIMPRESSION. THE first time I had sex with her was in the front seat of her Audi, the front passenger’s seat, while we were parked at a curb on H Street in D.C. She was giving me a ride home even though I lived only a few blocks away because we had been at the library studying late for finals. We were giddy from effort and lack of sleep, and I am a little vague as to how it was that she happened to fall into my lap after I was seated. I know only that we started to kiss, then touch, then move about. I know there was a sense of danger, a need to hurry, and that she got one leg out of her jeans and underwear and straddled me as I partially reclined in the seat. It was dark and I enjoyed it. From the sounds she was making, she enjoyed it every bit as much as I did.

The second time was on the National Seashore, a public beach, where anybody walking in the dark could have come upon us. After that, she could well have thought I wasn’t just kinky but an exhibitionist.

I am sure I was an incredible disappointment to her.

3

.

CHUCK LARSON WAS WEARING A SPORT COAT WITH ENOUGH material to house a family in the Sudan. It would not have been an attractive sport coat even in a smaller size on a much slimmer man. It did, however, project a certain good cheer, with its faint yellow squares imposed on an olive-green background.

He was sitting on the couch in my living room. I had much nicer furniture than a bachelor should have, at least a bachelor like me. Marion had picked it out. Paid for it herself. Left it behind. Now Chuck was dwarfing it. His huge legs were spread apart, his hands clasped between his knees. He wanted to know how my visit with Paulie went.

I told him I was shot at.

Chuck’s massive face crumpled. “By who?”

I shrugged. There was a certain amount of spite in that shrug.

“Paulie wouldn’t have had anything to do with shooting anyone. Least of all you. You told me you used to be best buds.”

“I didn’t say it was McFetridge, Chuck.” I let the silence build just to see if he would get uncomfortable. Chuck Larson was, after all, the one who had sent me to Idaho, directed me there, at least, and I still had no idea who had shot at me.