When Les came back he opened a bottle of red wine he’d bought and I poured some over the cooking meat. He handed me a paper cup of it and stood with me in front of the stove, drinking. I drank too, swallowing my vow not to, feeding the enemy voice in my head. I thought he might put his arm around me or something, but he didn’t. He just stood there beside me looking down at the wood fire in the stove, the steaks cooking. So I put my arm around him.

After a very quiet supper we ate off paper plates on our laps in front of the flames, we went upstairs to the loft, undressed in the light from the gas lantern, and got into bed, a queen-size mattress on the floor. The sheets felt cool and a little gritty against my skin and I wondered when they were last washed, who slept here before. I wanted to wash my face and brush my teeth but there wasn’t a bathroom, even a sink. I curled up to Les and rested my hand and cheek on his bare chest. I could hear the gas hiss from the lantern. It made a kind of shadowed light, and I saw how low the ceiling was, the bare rafters running at a steep angle to short walls, just two half-windows on each side, mosquitoes and moths flying at the screens, Lester’s heart beating against my hand. Without lifting my head, I asked him if he was all right.

“Yes. I’m all right.” His voice was tired, and sounded weak.

“All right but sad, huh?”

He took a long breath and let it out his nose. I could feel it move my hair. “I just keep seeing my father drive off in his packed station wagon. I swore I’d never do that to my own, Kathy.”

Something fluttered inside me. “Do you want to go home?”

“That’s not home.”

I thought I knew what he meant, but I didn’t want to press him. I moved my hand down just to let let my fingers nestle in the coarse hair there, but he grew hard right away and our conversation seemed to continue though neither of us spoke again.

THE NEXT DAY, Sunday, was just that, full of sun. I had to pee first thing, so Lester handed me a roll of toilet paper, kissed me, and told me to find a spot in the woods. After, he told me to bring my toothbrush and he showed me a trail behind the camp that led through the pine trees to a clearing at the river. In the soft ground was an upside-down aluminum rowboat resting on a tree stump. The river was calm and wide here and seemed to end in the trees. It looked more like a pond, surrounded on three sides with woods, which was strange because I could still hear its water running back down through the stone bed.

“Won’t it drain itself?”

Lester put his arm around my shoulders. “It’s fed by an underground river. How often do you get to see that in life? The source of something?” Three dragonflies ticked along the surface to tall grass at the edge of the water. Les squatted and began to brush his teeth. I did too, spitting on the ground behind me, rinsing my mouth with cool water from my cupped hand. Lester filled a tin pot, and back at the cabin we drank scalding coffee on the small front porch and ate bread we’d toasted on the stove. Lester’s hair stuck out a little in places and he hadn’t shaved. He was leaning back in his chair, his sneakered feet up on the railing, drinking his coffee, and he looked good, like the pain he’d felt last night was only from his dreams. I lit a cigarette. “We gonna clean this place up or what?”

“How’s your foot?”

“I can put all my weight on it.”

“We should get damages for that too, the bastards.”

“Who you going to call about that?”

“A bunch of people. Tomorrow’s lawyer day.” He looked at me and smiled, then stood and tossed the last of his coffee over the railing. “Let’s do it.”

We spent the morning and early afternoon cleaning the whole cabin. And it was filthy. Under the dust on the floor around the chopping block were fish scales stuck to the planks. I got down on my hands and knees and scraped them off with a spoon. In the corners were dust webs four and five feet long, and all around the card table by the window were cigarette and cigar butts. While I was sweeping Les heated two small pots of river water on the woodstove, then he mopped the floor after me. He didn’t have any detergent to use so I poured in some glass cleaner I’d found under the pots-and-pans crate. There was a ripped T-shirt there too, and I went to work cleaning the windows and screens. At first, I’d wanted my Walkman, some fast beat in my head to keep me going, but after a while I didn’t miss the music. It was nice just hearing the squeak of the rag on cleaner against glass, the gurgling of the Purisima River through the trees, Lester working with me.

In the corner of the porch next to a rusted-out barbecue grill was a dirty blanket and under it was a long ax, a yellow chain saw, and a plastic gallon jug half full of what looked like oil and gas. Les found a pair of pliers and a screwdriver and he tightened the chain blade, then got the thing started. It spewed out blue smoke and was as loud as a dirt bike and he carried it off into the trees and I heard him cutting for a long time. I was glad when he stopped. I walked out there, still limping a bit, and helped him carry logs back to the camp. He had cut up some kind of smooth-barked tree, maple, he thought, a hardwood that would burn well in the stove. We made three trips each. He’d load my arms up, then grab two armfuls and follow me to the house. On the way back for more logs we held hands and Lester pointed out different kinds of wildflowers in the trees, or else we’d just walk through the heat of the woods together, sweating and breathing a little hard from the work, the sun on us in places, nothing but the sound of the river and a few birds.

Once we got all the logs in a pile in front of the porch, Lester took off his shirt and started splitting them with the ax. I went down to the Purisima with a plastic cup and filled and drank three times, then brought Lester some. The sweat was dripping off his nose and mustache and he smiled and thanked me, drank the water, then leaned over and gave me a short wet kiss. I smoked a cigarette on the porch step and watched him split wood awhile. His shoulders and back were gleaming with sweat, and veins were starting to come out in his long arms. Sometimes he would let out a little grunt as he swung the ax down onto the end of a log, then he’d kick the split wood aside, bend over to prop up another full log, and swing again. A fly landed on his face and walked across his cheek to his ear, but Lester didn’t even seem to notice it. I thought at first it was because he was concentrating so hard on what he was doing, but then I began to wonder if it wasn’t something else, if Lester was maybe thinking about his family, his wife and kids. And I hoped he wasn’t.

I left the porch and went inside to make tuna fish sandwiches. After a few more logs, Lester stopped and walked back through the trees towards his car. Then I saw him walking back to the camp, carrying his suitcase, his dry-cleaned uniform and clothes on hangers draped over his shoulder. He was still bare-chested, the sunlight on him as he stepped into the clearing whistling some tune through his teeth. I was relieved to hear it; I really liked being with Lester Burdon. I thought how this morning I’d felt more like myself than I had in a long time, maybe since the first days with Nick. And I wanted it to be good for Les too, and when I heard him whistling, I hurried to the door to take his clothes on hangers from him, and he kissed me deep, pulling me to his slick chest.

Up in the hot loft we took off our clothes and lay down together on the mattress. The room smelled almost like an attic, like dry wood and old furniture stuffing. But I could smell the woods outside the open screen windows too, the pine and eucalyptus, the hardwood tree Lester had cut up. And I could smell my own wetness as I lay on my back and Les licked me and I reached down and held his head in both my hands, my eyes on the rafters above me. I thought of Nicky the morning he left, the way he sat on the edge of the bed and just looked at me. Just that. Looked at me. Then I thought of my house, mine and Frank’s, of that Arab family living there, having parties there. What Les was doing felt good, warm and slightly electric, but I was thinking too much to let go into the orgasm I knew he was trying to give me. I pulled away and took him in my mouth, until he came against the back of my throat and I swallowed. I moved up and kissed him while he tried to push himself back inside me but he’d gone soft and so we lay there awhile, holding each other, our skin sticking.