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tear the clothes from her body. Terrified, she’d fled the house. Ran through the woods for what she thought was hours, until she’d stumbled upon our little gathering. She didn’t know where in the U.S. she was. No papers. No passport. No nothing.
    She wouldn’t reveal the scoundrel’s name, either. A matter of pride, she said. If the folks back home should ever find out what had happened to her . . . well, that was something she just couldn’t live with.
    In twos and threes we wandered off and talked it over while she sipped brandy and huddled under a blanket by the fire. Calling the cops was discussed, of course; we were, after all, a pretty solidly upper-middle-class bunch. That’s when Gordy piped up, which was, now that I think about it, really out of character for him. Gordy was a listener, not a talker. Maybe we should wait on the cops thing, he said. He had plenty of room. He was knocking around a six-bedroom house all by himself. Let’s give the lady a good night’s sleep and then see what it is she wants to do.
    We should have known something was amiss when neither of them showed up at the following night’s gathering. By the time anybody saw Gordy again, he was so distended by lust, his big feet looked as if they were floating above the grass.
    In less than a week, she owned him, lock, stock, and lottery. That’s when people began to say what they later claimed they’d been thinking all along. This wasn’t right. This poor guy was a deer in the headlights. Maybe somebody should have a word with Gordy. Everybody had an opinion. Bob with the ski boat was still pushing for the cops. Rachel was in favor of the man-to-man approach. Me? I’ve never been much on telling other adults what to do. I mean, I’ll stop you if you’re about to step in front of a bus, but otherwise you’re pretty much on your own, as far as I’m concerned.
    Interestingly, it was the women who first had doubts. Right off, Tina Bandon said she thought the story was crap. Even Rachel, who is much disinclined to render her professional opinion outside the office, said there was something just a bit off about the woman, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. All of which was odd, when you think about it, because, I mean, here was a wronged woman, fallen victim to the paternal penis oppressors, a situation where womanly solidarity should have reared its coiffured head, but where only distrust seemed to fester.
    Me? I mean . . . I don’t kid myself . . . who could blame the guy? Missy Allen was a very hot package, indeed. When I look at it now, there was more of an art to that packaging than I’d noticed at the time. You had to get past the baggy clothes and the wan smile to notice how incredibly put together she was. She made you work at it. All fresh-scrubbed girl-next-door with a truckload of serious woman equipment. The allure was lost on nobody.
    Gordy never had a chance.
    That Thursday night, Gordy pulled his rental Escalade as close to the beach as he was able and walked down to the nightly fire. Missy stayed in the car. Gordy announced that he and Missy and the lottery money were leaving. Heading up to Canada to get her paperwork straightened out and then . . . pregnant pause . . . they were gonna get married. A considerably longer silence dogged him on his way back to the car.
    It’s like when people tell you they’re getting a divorce. You don’t know whether to say you’re sorry to hear about it, or pound them on the back with heartfelt glee. Sorta depends on the circumstances, doesn’t it?
    I’d thought of him a few times since then. Wondered how things had worked out. But I’d never laid eyes on Gordy again, until the night before last, when he died with my name spilling out of his mouth.
    Rachel smoothed the photograph for about the fiftieth time.
    “I wonder what happened to all that money?” she asked.
    “Now, that’s the question, isn’t it?” I replied.

     
    I stopped at The Two Bells