Justin Cronin - The Summer Guest

At least I made it past the lawyers before the tears came.

You might think that the news your name had just appeared in a rich man’s will would blow you clean over like a March wind, but that wasn’t what happened to me. I was surprised, sure, dumbfounded really, and happy as hell, but I didn’t spend a second mooning over my good fortune, or wondering what I’d done to deserve it. (Since I’d done nothing.) What I did instead was this: After Hal had gone off to check on his family, and Joe and Kate had left to close down the kitchen for the night with Lucy, I headed down to the lake, sat myself on the dock with my back against the rail, opened a can of beer I’d filched from the fridge-I hadn’t touched the Scotch-and set my gear turning. I had run the books with Lucy long enough to know what the cash flow situation was. Kate had won a scholarship, but Bowdoin wasn’t cheap; her parents were forty grand in hock for it, and the meter was still running. Without anybody’s college degree to pay for, or a condo in the Keys, I figured I could turn a profit pretty quickly. A year from now I’d be running solidly in the black-not printing money, but doing well enough to buy a few ads in the Sunday travel sections of the Times and the Globe, and maybe a couple of well-timed notices in one of the glossy outdoor travel mags, to get in on the so-called adventure travel boom. The staff, of course, would have to grow. I’d need a couple of extra guides at least and maybe a full-time instructor, and then of course there were the cabins to consider, some modest renovation being the next, obvious step; I was thinking maybe something a bit upscale, with skylights over the bedrooms, good Danish woodwork and jets in the tub, just the sort of thing to attract the cross-country ski crowd, and while I was at it, why not keep the place running all year? (Never mind that I didn’t know anything about running a ski resort.) My thinking was all purely hypothetical, the way people will talk about what they’d buy if they won the pick-six, but the more I spun ideas around, the more the whole thing made a kind of sense, as if the camp had always been mine.

And of course, I was really waiting on the dock for Kate, though it was even money whether it would be she or Joe who came to find me. It was Kate I wanted to see that night, there by the lake on the first really chilly night of summer, all my plans hatching. But an hour passed, the beer can grew warm and light in my fist, and I was still alone. Across the lake, the loons, quiet since sunset, piped up again. The lights of Harry’s cabin were still on; shapes moved by the window, and I saw Hal come out to the porch, holding January in his arms. It would be a difficult night for all of them, I knew. And when I think of that night, as I like to do, my memory begins here, with Hal on the porch with his daughter in his arms and the sound of the loons, their ghostly, echoing music filling the starry air.

I was just about to give up and head in when I heard footsteps coming down the gravel path to the catwalk behind me. A light step that I knew: Kate.

“Howdy, stranger.” She plopped down beside me, and I saw that she had changed into blue jeans and an oversize sweatshirt (PROPERTY OF BOWDOIN ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT). She pulled her knees up to her chest and drew the sweatshirt down over them, bundling herself all the way to her ankles.

“Great loons,” she said. “Aren’t you cold?”

“Some.” I held up my empty can and rattled the dregs. “I’d offer you a beer, but I drank it.”

“I should have thought to bring some. Or maybe champagne?”

“Is the news that good?”

Kate sighed and looked out over the lake. “Well, I wish my parents had let me in on the whole story. And I’m a little pissed off at my father for that stunt with the Scotch. But yes, on the whole, yes. It’s what they want. That it’s you who gets the place is… well, something nice. A bonus.”

“What about you?”

“Well, that’s a question, Jordan.” Her voice was serious. “What about me?”

I followed her eyes across the water. The land on the other side wasn’t actually part of Harry’s estate, though it might just as well have been, since the camp held a ninety-nine-year lease from Maine Paper for two hundred acres rimming the lake to the north and west. I would be a very old man when it ran out. I didn’t know exactly where the lines fell, but I didn’t have to. It was so much land it didn’t matter.

“I guess I was thinking maybe you’d stay. You know, guide in the summers.”

“Maybe nothing, Jordan.” She hugged herself in the cold. “Say what’s on your mind. You want me as a guide?”

“That’s not what I meant.” I didn’t know what to say. I thought about the winter just passed, the long months of thinking about her and the hard emptiness it had carved inside me. Until that night-until just a couple of hours ago, in fact-I’d been ready to give up everything: the camp, the life I had here, who I was. “I’d miss you.”

She bumped my shoulder with hers. “Better. Now, how bad exactly?”

“Well. A lot. I’d say I’d miss you plenty.”

“It wouldn’t be the same without me, something like that? I’m not leading the witness here, am I?”

I nodded. It was too dark to see her face clearly, but I thought she was smiling. She enjoyed being smart in just this way, her mind moving a little faster than everybody else’s.

“No, it wouldn’t be the same. Not at all.”

Kate undid her legs from under the sweatshirt and let them fall over the edge of the dock, shifting her weight to balance on her palms. “I don’t mean to put words in your mouth, Jordan, but sometimes you work this north-country Mainer thing a little too hard. Maybe it’s the winters up here, I don’t know, but waiting to hear from Jordan can be pretty trying sometimes.”

“It gets pretty quiet,” I said. “You spend a lot of time not even really thinking.”

“ Jordan,” she said a little crossly, “I know you. I’ve had eight years to figure this out. I’ll admit there are still some things I don’t get. But not thinking?” She shook her head. “I don’t believe that for a second.”

A moment went by, and from Harry’s cabin, breaking the stillness, came the sound of muffled coughing. I thought of the plastic mask, the shiny tank with wheels. His long night had only just begun. Kate was perfectly right about me, of course. I wondered why I hadn’t thought anyone would notice. But now I knew they had.

“You know, last winter I almost came down to see you at school. I practically had the truck packed before I decided not to.”

“Well, you should have, Jordan.” She gave a measured nod. “If you’d called, I would have told you to come.”

“I wish I had.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere. Let me ask you something. What else do you wish? That maybe you could kiss me?”

I started to speak but couldn’t, and Kate gave a little laugh. “I’m sorry to rattle you, Jordan, but someone’s got to.”

I began to take a sip of my beer before I remembered it was empty. “I’ve thought about it,” I said.

“Me too, Jordan. Me too. But it hasn’t happened. You know, most of the men who want to kiss me at least go ahead and try.”

“How do they do?”

“Oh, about average. Some get kissed back. The ones that don’t… well, I’m sure they’ll be all right. Nothing really terrible ever happens, though. Nothing terrible would happen to you.”

“It’s not that simple,” I said. “I don’t think your folks would be too crazy about it.”

I heard her sigh. “Oh, Jordan, probably they’d like nothing better. You know that as well as I do.”