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head.
    “It’s been very, very good for us living here,” Sarah said. “We can’t tell you.”
    “There was something about this fellow I liked when I first saw him,” Pete said to Sarah. “I’m glad I rented the house to him. You can tell a lot from a man when you first meet him. I liked this fellow of yours. You take care of him, now.”
    Sarah reached for a celery stick. A little bell went off in the kitchen and Betty said, “Excuse me,” and left the room.
    “Let me freshen those up for you,” Pete said. He left the room with our glasses and returned in a minute with more wine for Sarah and a full glass of Coke for me.
    Betty began carrying in things from the kitchen to put on the dining room table. “I hope you like surf and turf,” Pete said. “Sirloin steak and lobster tail.”
    “It sounds fine, it’s a dream dinner,” Sarah said.
    “I guess we can eat now,” Betty said. “If you’d like to come to the table. Pete sits here always,” Betty said. “This is Pete’s place. Phil, you sit there. Sarah, you sit there across from me.”
    “Man who sits at the head of the table picks up the check,” Pete said and laughed.
    It was a fine dinner: green salad dotted with tiny fresh shrimp, clam chowder, lobster tail, and steak. Sarah and Betty drank wine, Pete drank mineral water, I stayed with the Coke. We talked a little about Jonestown after Pete brought it up, but I could see that conversation made Sarah nervous. Her lips paled, and I managed to steer us around to salmon fishing.
    “I’m sorry we didn’t have a chance to go out,” Pete said. “But the sports fishermen aren’t doing anything yet. It’s only the fellows with the commercial licenses that are getting them, and they’re going way out. In another week or two maybe the salmon will have moved in. Anytime now, really,” Pete said. “But you’ll be on the other side of the country then.”
    I nodded. Sarah picked up her wineglass.
    “I bought a hundred and fifty pounds of fresh salmon from a guy yesterday, and that’s what I’m featuring on the menu over there now. Fresh salmon,” Pete said. “I put it right in the freezer and fresh-froze it. Fellow drove up with it in his pickup truck, an Indian, and I asked him what he was asking for it and he said $3.50 a pound. I said $3.25, and he said we had a deal. So I fresh-froze it and I have it over there on the menu right now.”
    “Well, this was fine,” I said. “I like salmon, but it couldn’t have been any better than what we had here tonight. This was delicious.”
    “We’re so glad you could come,” Betty said.
    “This is wonderful,” Sarah said, “but I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much lobster tail and steak. I don’t think I can eat all of mine.”
    “Whatever’s left we’ll put in a doggy bag for you,” Betty saidand blushed. “Just like at the restaurant. But save room for dessert.”
    “Let’s have coffee in the living room,” Pete said.
    “Pete has some slides we took when we were on our trip,” Betty said. “If you’d care to see them, we thought we might put up the screen after dinner.”
    “There’s brandy for those who want it,” Pete said. “Betty’ll have some, I know. Sarah? You’ll have some. That’s a good girl. It doesn’t bother me a bit to have it around and have my guests drink it. Drinking’s a funny thing,” Pete said.
    We had moved back into the living room. Pete was putting up a screen and talking. “I always keep a supply of everything on hand, as you noticed out there, but I haven’t touched a drink of anything alcoholic myself for six years. Now this was after drinking more than a quart a day for ten years after I retired from the service. But I quit, God knows how, but I quit, I just quit. I turned myself over to my doctor and just said, Help me, doc. I want to get off this stuff, doc. Can you help me? Well, he made a couple of calls. Said he knew some fellows used to have trouble with it, said there’d