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to go out into my very own “Florida room,” whatever that was, and look out at the Gulf of Mexico. I wondered if it would be any better, any different, than looking out at Lake Phalen. I thought I would settle for different, at least to begin with. Different would be a start. When I turned back, Tom Riley didn’t look himself at all. At first I thought he was sick to his stomach, and then I realized he was struggling not to cry.
    â€œTom, what’s the matter?” I asked.
    He tried to speak and produced only a watery croak. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Boss, I can’t get used to seeing you this way, with just the one arm. I’m so sorry.”
    It was artless, unrehearsed, and sweet: a straightshot to the heart. I think there was a moment when we were both close to bawling, like a couple of Sensitive Guys on The Oprah Winfrey Show .
    That idea helped me get myself under control again. “I’m sorry, too,” I said, “but I’m getting along. Really. Now drink your damn beer before it goes flat.”
    He laughed and poured the rest of his Grain Belt into the glass.
    â€œI’m going to give you an offer to take back to her,” I said. “If she likes it, we can hammer out the details. Do-it-yourself deal. No lawyers needed.”
    â€œAre you serious, Eddie?”
    â€œI am. You do a comprehensive accounting so we have a bottom-line figure to work with. We divide the swag into four shares. She takes three—seventy-five per cent—for her and the girls. I take the rest. The divorce itself . . . hey, Minnesota’s a no-fault state, after lunch we can go out to Borders and buy Divorce for Dummies .”
    He looked dazed. “Is there such a book?”
    â€œI haven’t researched it, but if there isn’t, I’ll eat your shirts.”
    â€œI think the saying’s ‘eat my shorts.’ ”
    â€œIsn’t that what I said?”
    â€œNever mind. Eddie, that kind of deal is going to trash the estate.”
    â€œAsk me if I give a shit. Or a shirt, for that matter. I still care about the company, and the company is fine, intact and being run by people who know what they’re doing. As for the estate, all I’m proposing is that we dispense with the ego that usually allows the lawyers to swallow the cream. There’s plenty for all of us, if we’re reasonable.”
    He finished his beer, never taking his eyes off me.“Sometimes I wonder if you’re the same man I used to work for,” he said.
    â€œThat man died in his pickup,” I said.
    vii
    Pam took the deal, and I think she might have taken me again instead of the deal if I’d offered—it was a look that came and went on her face like sunshine through clouds when we had our lunch to discuss the details—but I didn’t offer. I had Florida on my mind, that refuge of the newly wed and the nearly dead. And I think in her heart of hearts, even Pam knew it was for the best—knew that the man who had been pulled out of his ruined Dodge Ram with his steel hardhat crushed around his ears like a crumpled pet-food can wasn’t the same guy who’d gotten in. The life with Pam and the girls and the construction company was over; there were no other rooms in it to explore. There were, however, doors. The one marked SUICIDE was currently a bad option, as Dr. Kamen had pointed out. That left the one marked DUMA KEY.
    One other thing occurred in my other life before I slipped through that door, though. It was what happened to Monica Goldstein’s Jack Russell Terrier, Gandalf.
    viii
    If you’ve been picturing my convalescent retreat as a lakeside cottage standing in splendid isolation at theend of a lonely dirt road in the north woods, you better think again—we’re talking your basic suburbia. Our place by the lake stood at the end of Aster Lane, a paved street running from East Hoyt Avenue to the