Steve Kistulentz - Panorama

All morning, people had introduced themselves by their association— I’m a friend of Jane’s. We met in Mike’s box out at the stadium. You must be Tim’s girlfriend. Aren’t you the guy who broke his wrist at Shelby’s house? We’ve got room for one more here if you tell me who you work for. I play doubles with Terry on Tuesday nights. A young man resplendent in a beer company T-shirt and baseball hat stepped next to her. She tried to place him, tried equally hard not to let her face betray that she did not recognize him.

“Great party. And great house. I like the decorations,” he said, picking up a beer bottle that sat on its side. “Early American decadent. But the house ought to have a name, in black metal letters over the gate. Like a real ranch. Very casual and ironic. Rancho Relaxo. ” He handed Sarah a bottle of Mexican beer and said, “Carter Lundy, at your service,” turning on a high-watt smile.

After a quick handshake, Sarah realized how she knew Carter Lundy. Ever since she had moved to Texas, she had been part of a group of young professionals who rented a beach house in Galveston. The five-hour drive made less and less sense each summer, but Sarah did it anyway; there was nothing sadder than being the oldest single girl at the bar. Still, occasionally she led the procession in her ancient Volkswagen convertible, the top down and an Igloo cooler packed with cold beer nestled in the Beetle’s backseat, all the while thinking she was too old for this kind of collegiate debauchery.

The romantic arrangements of those weekends tended to be temporary at best, and there was something temporary about Galveston too, its history, its architecture, its cast of characters. Every couple of decades, the town took it in the teeth from a hurricane, which meant, voilà —there was Dan Rather floating by in his yellow slicker, saying how nothing matched the destruction of the 1900 storm, when they’d had to weigh down the bodies and bury them at sea, only to have them float back up to the beach. Each time since, they rebuilt the island with bigger and better Kwikie Marts and Dairy Queens, T-shirt shops and all-you-can-eat fried-seafood emporiums. Sarah tried to remember if Carter had been part of the original beach house crowd—twenty-five-cent tacos and twenty-five-cent Bud Lights Friday night till midnight!—the Vegas-style justifications: What happens at the beach stays at the beach. Yet she could recall only fuzzy particulars: Carter worked for another insurance agency, but he had the gift, like Mike Renfro, of remembering names and birthdays and generally making people feel like they wanted to be around him.

She put it together as a question. “Galveston, right?”

Carter tapped his beer bottle against Sarah’s and said in a mock British accent, “Cheers, then.”

Sarah laughed. She worked her way around the kitchen collecting bottle caps and abandoned plastic cups.

Carter picked up a plastic trash bag and followed, holding it open for her. When she thanked him, he touched his forehead with his index finger, a gesture Sarah interpreted as Gary Cooper–esque, the taciturn cowboy tipping up his hat to better see the lady.

“Come on,” she said, pulling the belt of her robe loose, “you can buy a girl a drink before kickoff.”

Sarah motioned for Carter to sit at the end of the sofa, then draped herself over the sofa’s arm, letting her legs fall across his. On the floor, Gabriel played with a model truck and a stuffed brown bear, alternately running over the bear or having it stand up and kick over the truck, an irradiated giant rampaging through a small town.

“So, what’s the kid like?” Carter pointed. Sarah brushed his hand down from her upper thigh.

She had a theory—one that she might articulate once the child was out of earshot—about his future: he would become a socially addled adolescent, unable to shake his awkwardness. She pictured him participating in elaborate role-playing games that used sixteen-sided dice. “I don’t know. He pretty much does his own thing. His mom calls every four hours to remind me what to do next, what to make for dinner, when to put him to bed. But the kid and I negotiated an agreement.”

“An agreement?” Carter fiddled with the dingy end of the belt from Sarah’s robe.

“Not to tell his mom. I let him do his thing. He’s on a kick, Vienna sausages wrapped in Pillsbury biscuits. He showed me how to make them, and as long as I watch the oven, that’s what he wants for dinner. Three days in a row, it’s been Vienna sausages and Cheez-Its for lunch and dinner.” Sarah munched her way through some mixed nuts, then held up a Brazil nut, staring at it before throwing it back in the bowl.

“Do you think he has a peanut allergy? He looks like the type of kid who might have a peanut allergy.”

“He’s had a hard time. His dad is out of the picture,” Sarah said.

Then Gabriel said, “Tell the general that Tokyo is a goner,” before forcing the bear to kick over the truck again, this time adding the sound of mock-human screams.

When the big-screen television went to commercial, then returned to network-news headquarters, Carter said, “Shit. I thought the games went back to back. Walter-to-Walter coverage.”

“What? What’s that?”

“Something my granddad used to say.”

Sarah shook her head. “Whatever. We’ve got time. There’s this news thing. Maybe a half hour.” Behind her, the giant screen split into two boxes, each filled with a nearly identical white male, around forty, one pristine in navy suit, white shirt, yellow tie, the other in a more traditional Washington uniform, gray suit, blue button-down oxford shirt, burgundy foulard-print tie.

Gabriel looked up from his toy bear’s path of wanton destruction and pointed at the screen. “Uncle Richie.”

Sarah stood. “Check it out,” she said, catching herself before she uttered a more expletive-laden interjection in front of the kid. “It’s actually the kid’s uncle.” The caption confirmed his identity: Richard MacMurray, Free-Speech Advocate. Sarah listened for the anchorman, who promised a spirited debate right after these words, and an update from the college football scoreboard . “How about a margarita, a beer, something?” she called over her shoulder.

Carter pulled Sarah through the hallway by her hand, leading her toward the open bathroom door. He pirouetted neatly behind her, shutting the door with a thrown-out hip. “I’ll settle for something.”

THE BLUE ROOF INN nearest the Dallas–Fort Worth airport was a squat, two-story motel that looked like it had been built from the same blueprint as every other 1970s-era motel, with its outside staircases, rusting aluminum railings, and doors alternately painted in forest green and pumpkin orange. The squat architecture and the safety railings and the L shape of the building gave off a bad vibe, as if it had been conjured from that picture taken just moments after Dr. King had been shot, men in crisp suits all pointing in the direction of the shooter.

Jeris McDougal and his girlfriend, Jenny Wilkins, walked along the second floor’s outermost corridor, followed by Jenny’s sister. Tara Wilkins worked at the motel as a part-time housekeeper, weekends and holidays. She’d gotten the job through a connection from the sober-living house she’d stayed in for a few months when she’d gotten out of the hospital.

“One hour. Don’t pick up the phone. Don’t take the matches from the ashtray and don’t smoke and don’t piss and, really, just don’t leave a single sign that you were even here,” Tara said, and she stepped forward to punctuate her comments with a finger to Jeris’s chest. He caught her hand, turned her by the wrist until her palm opened, and because he laughed a deep and profound laugh, she did not take it as anything malevolent. Her whole life had been full of questionable choices, and this was one of the smaller ones, so she dropped the key into his other hand.