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Gillian went on, “Ethan doesn’t really care about me. It’s just the sex.”

“Well, he’s a boy.”

“Why are they all like that?”

“Oh, they’re not.” Eugenie was thinking in particular of Honey Santana’s ex, who’d obviously never stopped loving her. There was no such man in Eugenie’s past; even Van Bonneville had quit writing from prison.

“Rate the massage,” Eugenie said.

“Awesome. Eleven on a scale of ten.” Gillian paused and frowned. “Know what? I gotta find a new word. I’m so over awesome.”

“It’s been beaten to death,” Eugenie concurred.

“Hey, how about super? I had a super massage.”

Eugenie shook her head. “Super is over, too. Especially if you’re gonna be a big-time TV weather woman.”

“God, who knows what I’m gonna be.” Gillian laughed. “Did you have the Japanese guy or the deep-tissue redneck? I had the redneck.”

“Me too. Showed me pictures of his darling twin boys.”

“Did he?”

“Yeah,” Eugenie said, “then he took out a vibrator the size of a hoagie and asked me if I was into toys.”

Gillian hooted. “See! They’re all the same!”

Eugenie drained her glass. The sun was gone, the horizon aglow. There were scads of little kids running up from the beach, shouting and giggling and kicking up sand.

“Patience,” she said to Gillian. “That’s the secret. Once you start rushin’ into these things, making lousy choices, it’s awful hard to dig yourself out. By that I mean it’s hard to change.”

Gillian said, “You haven’t done so bad. Look where we are, Genie-the beach, the ocean, rum drinks! The rest of the country’s freezin’ their butts off.”

Eugenie thought: Treading water is where I am. Maxing out my credit card.

“What happens is, you start to give off a certain vibe,” she said. “Why do you think that masseur came on to me and not you? Because he knew, sweetie, that I’m not above fucking the help when I get bored. They’ve got radar for it, men do, the boredom vibe. You be careful about that, okay?”

Gillian went and got a beer from the minibar. She took a slug and said, “Wait for the good ones-that’s what you mean by patience?”

“They’re out there. I know for a fact,” Eugenie said.

“Like Thlocko?”

“Find one from earth, Gillian. His baggage had baggage.”

“But he’s different. I like him.”

Eugenie said, “Me too.”

“Totally not boring.”

“That’s true.”

“Thanks for not sleeping with him. I mean it.”

“Anytime,” said Eugenie.

Gillian tipped the last half of her beer into a clay planter. “I better head back to Tallahassee tomorrow-I’ve gotta buy my books for the new term. What about you?”

“I’m on a non-stop to DFW. Gonna quit my shitty job and start over.”

“Yeah? And do what?”

“Quilts. I hear they’re coming back. Or maybe scented candles,” Eugenie said with a straight face. “Something where I can work at home and never have to meet any jerks.”

Gillian watched a flock of gray pelicans crashing bait in the waves. “What a crazed trip-I mean crazed. Maybe we should, like, celebrate.”

Eugenie Fonda agreed. “I’m thinking lobster,” she said, “and a Chilean chardonnay.”

“Magnificent,” said Gillian with a wink. “How’s that for a word?”

Ninety-one miles away, Boyd Shreave finally got to change his pants.

He’d waited in the poinciana tree until dusk, listening for the two men who had accosted him at gunpoint. Then he had commenced a nervous descent that transpired in stages, the first being baby steps and the second being a spontaneous heels-over-head plummet. By some miracle, he’d landed short of the cactus patch. And although he’d torn off his windbreaker and bloodied his palms on a ridge of loose oyster shells, Shreave was overjoyed not to have crippled himself.

He removed his soiled boat shorts and searched hurriedly through the Orvis bag for a dry pair of Tommy Bahamas. He settled for apple-green Speedos, which he’d packed in the fanciful expectation of appearing well matched with his bethonged mistress on the beach.

In the pup tent that he and Eugenie Fonda once shared, Shreave found an open bottle of water, which he chugged. From Honey Santana’s tent he appropriated bug spray and a small halogen headlamp; from his own gear he took his NASCAR toothbrush and the paperback of Storm Ghoul, for toilet paper.

Choosing an escape route was easy-Shreave aimed himself in the opposite direction of that taken by the men searching for Honey. While cowering in the tree he’d heard two small concussions that might have been gunshots, several minutes apart, indicating that something dangerous was happening on the other side of the island. Shreave headed briskly the other way, flaying a rough path through the vines and bushes and spiderwebs.

There was still a rim of amber along the skyline when he lurched through a slender opening in the mangroves. Heedlessly he waded into the water, the soles of his expensive deck shoes grating across a jagged shoal. He hoped to position himself to signal the first passing vessel, but of course no boats would be coming; mainly dope smugglers and poachers traveled at night through the Ten Thousand Islands, and they were not renowned for their Samaritanism.

The flats were turbid and cold, and Shreave in his glorified jockstrap began to shiver. As darkness closed in, he employed Honey’s headlamp to scan the intricate tree line for the menacing reflection of panther eyes. Instead what he spotted was a shiny tangerine-colored canoe, canted among the spidery roots.

Excitedly Shreave dragged the craft to open water and, on his fourth attempt, bellied himself over the side. With his lacerated hands he snatched up the paddle and felt an exultant rush-at last he would be free of the place!

He navigated Dismal Key Pass with equal measures of zeal and ineptitude. Despite the slack tide he expended more energy correcting his frequent course oscillations than he did advancing the canoe. The exercise served to warm him, however, and present the illusion of pace. Never had Shreave attempted anything so daring as a getaway, and he regretted that neither Genie nor Lily was there to witness it. He chose to believe that they would have been dazzled.

After an hour he paused to rest, the canoe drifting noiselessly. With a stirring anxiety he contemplated the depth of the night; nothing but shadows and starlight and a pale sickle of moon. Far from being soothed by the silence, Shreave was fretful. It was as if he’d been sucked through a time tunnel into a bleak primeval emptiness with no horizons. He couldn’t remember feeling so alone or out of place, and he yearned for evidence of human intrusion-a car’s horn, a boom box, the high rumble of a jetliner.

Not being the spiritual sort, Boyd Shreave saw no divine hand in the unbroken wilderness that lay before him; no grand design in the jungled labyrinth of creeks and islets. Such unspoiled vistas inspired in Shreave not a nanosecond of introspection; when it came to raw nature, he remained staunchly incurious and devoid of awe. He would much rather have been back in Fort Worth, watching American Idol, swilling beer and gorging himself on microwave burritos.

Grimly he picked up the paddle and went back to work. He hadn’t a clue where he was or what direction he was heading, although he suspected that the vast gray body of water to his right was the Gulf of Mexico-no place for a puny canoe. After an hour of ponderous stroking he was in profound discomfort. Unfamiliar with toil, his arms burned, his lower back ached and his abs were cramping. He’d already decided to quit for the night when he heard what sounded like an engine, and the soft slapping of waves against a hull.

Shreave shoved the paddle between his knees and fumbled to activate the small lamp strapped to his forehead. He swiveled his neck owlishly, playing the narrow white beam back and forth across the water until he located the source of the noise: a small flat-bottomed craft motoring parallel to the canoe, about seventy-five yards away. A tall man stood in the stern of the boat, facing away, one hand on the tiller of the engine.