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we’re not formal at all. I mean the homes along here, it’s more like a club. This whole north end of the key. The Jamisons and Laybournes and Claytons and Tomleys and Carstairs and Thatchers. Gus Thatcher, and he is an old darling, bought up most of this land in the beginning and he’s been careful to sell it to the right people. And the Key Club is so handy. We usually all end up there Sunday evenings.”
    “We do?”
    “Haven’t you seen it yet? It’s a rickety old place, full of stuffed fish, but the food is divine, really.”
    “It’s all like one big happy family.”
    “What? Oh, yea. Exactly. There are a few who don’t… participate very much, but we don’t have any of the wrong sort.”
    “This old darling-type fellow, this Gus somebody, you figure he’d sell me a hunk of land?”
    She seemed startled. “Well… the best pieces are gone and it’s really gotten terribly dear. The last piece sold, to a perfectly darling couple named Crown, well, it went at a hundred and sixty a foot, Gulf to bay, so they had to pay thirty-two thousand for their two hundred feet, and they’re going to start to build soon.”
    “I wouldn’t need so much, Marg. Just to park a trailer on.”
    “A trailer!”
    “We call them mobile homes now. It sounds more deluxe.”
    “You couldn’t do that! This is all zoned A-l residential. My goodness, you’d never… you’re joking, aren’t you?”
    “Yes. I’m pulling your leg, Marg. Actually I’m loaded.”
    “What?”
    “Loaded. Up to here in money.”
    “Really?”
    “What you call nouveau riche. I’m a diamond in the rough. Heart of gold. I really come on for dogs and kids. I’d be an asset to the Key.”
    She had become very uncertain. “Are you really thinking of staying here?”
    “I’m looking around, kiddo. Put it that way. Of course, I move into a place like this, I’d change my name to Rodens.”
    “Are you being rude?”
    “I don’t want to make you sore. I figure you could tip me off on something good down here to get into. Or that Charlie of yours could. Got to put money to work, you know.”
    “Did you… sell your newspaper?”
    “I never owned one. No, it was like this, Marg. My old man was a real slob. Ran a sheet metal shop in Buffalo, New York. He was so dumb and crude and ignorant people couldn’t stand him. I couldn’t. I never saw him one time since I was sixteen. But he had one hobby. He bought little chunks of stock and put them away. I never knew about that. Not until he died. Crazy stocks like Polaroid and Electric Boat and Reynolds Metals. The timing is interesting. Last October my wife gets a diagnosis of cancer, one of the fast hopeless kinds. By the end of November I am entirely out of money. By middle December the lawyers in Buffalo find me, ten days after the old man is buried, and suddenly I’m worth a few hundred thousand bucks. I could draw against it right away, but I didn’t get it all until two weeks after my wife died. Now my kids are in Melford School in Vermont, and I’m loaded, kiddo.”
    She stared at him. He noted that her hand shook a little when she hoisted the drink to her mouth.
    She got up and said, “I hope you’ll have a very nice visit here, Mr. Rodenska.”
    “Thanks, Mrs. Laybourne.”
    She started to turn away and then turned back with a small and social laugh, and a special gleam of malice. “You’d better be careful about putting any of your great wealth in Troy’s project. My Charlie would tell you the same thing.”
    She walked away. Rodenska forked up the last piece of cucumber and spoke to himself sharply. Down, boy. You’re too shaky to play games. Even with a target like that.
    At one point he had felt close to tears. With no reason. Not about Buttons. Tears, maybe, from a kind of helpless frustration at finding himself mauling the woman without cause. She couldn’t help what she was. Of the two of them, he had been the vicious one. (Except for that crack about Troy.) She was