“I think this is all of it,” I said.
“Bag, tackle box, rods,” he said. “That’s it.”
There was a feeling of suspension on the porch, an uneasy hiatus between something before and something that would come after, and I had arrived, I felt, between two parts of a conversation that had been bad and might become worse.
“If there’s anything you need, let me know,” I said.
“We’ll do that,” Quintin said.
He shoved a hand into a pocket and looked uncertain, but apparently he decided that a tip would not be appropriate in my case, and after a moment he pulled the hand out of the pocket and put it behind him.
“Do you own this place?” Laura Quintin asked suddenly.
She did not look at me and did not sound as if she really cared if I owned the place or not. Her voice was quiet and curiously flat.
“The bank and I,” I said.
“Do you live here by yourself?”
“Yes. Except for the guests.”
“I wonder why.”
“It’s a pretty good way to live,” I said. “A man’s life is pretty much his own.”
“I like a man who lives his own life,” she said.
She wasn’t really speaking to me. She was speaking to Jerome Quintin, her husband. Glancing at him, I saw that his face had suddenly set in stiff lines, his mouth pinched and white at the corners.
“I hope you enjoy your stay,” I said.
Neither of them answered, and I opened the screen door and went out and back up to the Chrysler and got another load of luggage and carried it to the middle cottage where Dan Grimes had gone. He heard me at the door and came out and held it open for me.
“Thanks,” I said.
“I should have carried it over myself,” he said.
“It’s all right,” I said. “It’s part of the service.”
He had taken off his hat and leather jacket and looked relaxed and happy in his plaid shirt.
“There’s a bottle of scotch in the bag,” he said. “Have a drink with me?”
“No, thanks,” I said. “I’ve got some work to do.”
“There must be a lot of work to running a place like this. Do you do it all yourself?”
“Most of it.”
“How are the fish biting now?”
“Fine. Lots of crappie and bass. The wall-eye are coming on.”
“That’s what I heard. A friend of mine was down here last week. He recommended your place.”
“Thank him for me when you see him.”
“I’ll try my luck after awhile. Toward evening.”
“Evening’s a good time,” I said.
He sounded natural and friendly, and I found myself liking him. I guess that’s why he’d been able to do all the things he’d done, because he had a natural and friendly way and a lot of people besides me had found themselves liking him until it was too late to know better. I said so long and went back for the last of the luggage and took it to the first cottage. On the way, I saw Ira Boniface standing at the edge of the lake at the foot of the slope with his back to the cottage. I pushed the screen door open and put the luggage on the floor of the porch. Rita Boniface asked from inside who it was, and I answered that it was John Laird with the luggage.
“Would you mind bringing it inside?” she said.
“Not at all,” I said.
I picked it up again and carried it into the sitting-sleeping room and set it on the floor by a studio couch. Rita Boniface was lying on her back on the double bed smoking a cigarette. She turned her head toward me and smiled lazily and breathed a thin cloud of smoke.
“What’s to do around here besides fishing?” she said.
“Not much,” I said. “It’s a fishing camp.”
“You look like a clever young man,” she said. “Maybe you can think of something.”
“I’ll try to make your stay as pleasant as possible,” I said.
She breathed smoke in and out of her lungs and laughed softly. The laugh had the effect of riding out on the smoke. Down below on the lake, a small cabin cruiser turned out of the main channel and around the point into the arm in front of the cottages. It pulled in slowly beside my gasoline dock, and its horn sounded twice.
“Excuse me,” I said. “Someone needs gas.”
“Come again when you can stay longer,” she said.
I went down the slope to the gasoline dock and filled the tank of the small cruiser and talked for a while with the pilot and then stood on the dock and watched the cruiser turn in the narrow arm and move back out into the channel. In spite of the sun and the quiet lake, I had a feeling that it was a bad day.
Later in the afternoon Dan Grimes came over to my cottage. He was carrying a spinning rod and reel in one hand, a green metal tackle box in the other.
“You going out?” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “Can you suggest a good place?”
“It depends on what you’re after.”
“Bass.”
“You’d better go up to the Gravois Arm. You know where it is?”
“Yes.”
“You want me to help you launch your boat?”
“No, thanks. Ira can help. Where’s the best place to launch it?”
“Just follow the road past the cottages. It runs right down to the water near the point. You’d better back down all the way. There’s no good place to turn.”
“All right. I’ll need enough gas to get around to the pump.”
“I’ve got some here in a can,” I said.
I gave him the can, and he went out and turned the Chrysler in the drive and started slowly backward down the road with the trailer in advance. As he passed the first cottage, Ira Boniface came out with his rod and tackle and got into the Chrysler while it continued to move. I went down to the gasoline pump and waited, and pretty soon they came around the point in the boat. The motor of the boat sounded sweet and strong. It was not a big boat, but it was the best you could buy of its kind and had cost quite a lot of money. I filled the tank and watched the boat move out into the channel and then went back up to the cottages to check the wood boxes.
The days that May were mostly clear and warm, but the evenings and nights generally got pretty cool, and sometimes it was pleasant to have a small fire in the fireplace. So I checked the wood boxes, and there was enough wood in all of them for that night. When I reached the last one and looked into it Laura Quintin came out onto the screened porch and spoke.
“May we please have some ice?” she said.
“There ought to be a couple of trays in the refrigerator,” I said.
“There isn’t any. Someone left the trays on the cabinet.”
“Sorry. I’ll get some and bring it right down.”
“Thank you.”
I went back to my own cottage and put a couple dozen cubes in a plastic bag and returned. Approaching the Quintins’ cottage, I heard Laura Quintin’s voice raised in anger, but in spite of volume and anger it retained, or acquired, a cold quality of deadly calm. It was somehow in accord with her pale reserve. She was the kind of woman, I thought, who would never in anger become excessively emotional and vulgar. She would become, as she was now, bitterly cold and incisive.
“The trouble with you,” she said, “is that you have an unfortunate combination of qualities. You are brilliant and charming and weak. Because you have no guts, you’re a perfect tool.”
“Thanks for your opinion,” Jerome Quintin said. “I’m happy to know precisely what you think of me.”
“Not at all. I’m delighted to tell you.”
“Would you care to learn, in return, what I think of you?”
“I don’t think I particularly care any longer.”
“Nevertheless, I want to tell you. Just for my own satisfaction. You have, my dear, no scope, no imagination, and not, I suspect, much intelligence. Because you want to be a nonentity, you want to make me one also.”