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like a willing participant.”
    “Well, maybe I am, then. I don’t know. Jesus.” And Canavan’s phone rings and saves them both and he answers and gets up and walks around the side of the house, saying Yeah, we can do that, we do jobs like that all the time. Now: Let me ask you a couple of questions. Jack looks up and catches Beth in the window of the side door. She’s wearing a white shirt, has a white mug in her hand. Her hair’s down in her face, a mess of curls, the way he’s always liked it best. His wife: He doesn’t think of her that way very often, tends to think of her simply as Beth. But there she is, his wife, right there. She’s waiting, in Canavan’s house, for him to come up and ring the bell and present her with her son.

    This was all coming, is the thing. Or maybe not this exactly, but something like it. He knew that much, knew something had been out there on the horizon even before he’d added a second house to his vast real estate portfolio. So: Last week, when Beth started banging around cups and plates and the mail and anything else she could move or slide or pick up and shake at him, he wasn’t wholly surprised. It’d been in the water. Rena, Canavan’s girlfriend, had left him at the beginning of the spring semester. She teaches with Beth at Kinnett, both of them in art history. This is how everybody met, how they ended up at the dinner table together once or twice a month for the last several years, one big happy family. Rena packed up in February, moved downtown, was living for a little while in a condo that belonged to somebody else over at the college, some corporate communications associate dean or associate-associate dean who was on fellowship somewhere for the semester. Canavan played, to the letter, the fucked-up boy. Drunken and spurned. Beth and Jack were there for him . They went over to the house a couple of times, ate pizza out of delivery boxes and drank beers on the frayed screen porch, him telling them how This is just temporary, this is just until we can work a few things out. Beth and Jack got gently drunk with him and agreed as much as possible. She’ll be back, Terry, Beth told him. How could she not? Now Jack wonders when Beth started plotting her own move into Canavan’s house. If, on those nights, she was sizing up where she’d throw her shoes after she came in the door. She had him fooled, though. They’d ride back home down 70, lights on high to watch for deer, and she’d reach across the seat for his hand. They were thankful it wasn’t them. That’s what he thought they were. Thankful.
    Canavan. What he’d figured was that she’d probably go downtown and crash with Rena for a few days—three or four, tops. Because he could see that easily enough: The two of them set up in the little swanky downtown revitalization condo together, drinking wine out of souvenir downtown wine tasting festival glasses, sitting around and listening to pirated underground Sri Lankan hip-hop some intentionally edgy student of Rena’s had turned her on to. They’d crank that up on the out-of-town dean’s stereo and grade papers and let their blue collar men hang out in their respective houses and get their heads together . It’d be good for everyone.
    Instead, she chose Canavan, which will break everything into pieces, of course, will put a fairly permanent dent in the diplomatic ties between everybody. His friendship with Canavan’s in the shitter, and he can’t see Rena and Beth drinking wine together out of any glasses, souvenir or not, any time soon. Butner sits with him after work, says, This is pretty goddamn fancy, what she’s up to here. I don’t know what the hell she thinks she’s doing over there, but this is something, I’ll tell you what. Jack tells him things were fine before the house. Or more fine. Butner shakes his head, says, I don’t know, man, I don’t know.
    It’s not just the house. He knows that. Knows it doesn’t help, didn’t help, but