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vacant and failed, snaking kudzu and catbrier weed strangling the whole ambitious venture. Utina’s tomorrow, more than likely, would be no different from Utina’s yesterday. “Because you can’t polish a turd,” he said aloud. Gooch looked at him, then yawned. You just make a mess trying, Frank thought, idling at the light, headed for Arla’s, groggy and annoyed and waiting for a change.
    Ten minutes later, Frank stood in the center of the Lil’ Champ, cursing his luck and hiding from Susan Holm. He crouched behind an aisle of shelves filled with bags of potato chips, pretzels, and pork rinds, and he peered out the front window, where Susan was jogging, making her way down Seminary Street toward the boat ramp, a long blond ponytail bouncing behind her. Frank knew from maddening experience she would run to the end of the rickety dock, stop, look left and right up the expanse of the Intracoastal, and then pivot and jog back up the street toward home. She executed the same ritual every morning, without fail, and why Frank had not had the sense to wait until after he knew she’d be safely ensconced back in her apartment over Sterling’s Drugstore before he came to the Lil’ Champ he didn’t know.
    Another thing he didn’t know, couldn’t quite put his finger on, was why he was always trying to avoid her, had in fact been trying to avoid her since she’d made her unsolicited devotion to him known in elementary school. She was, by any measure, one of the most attractive single women in town, and most of Utina’s male population would have given considerably to be on her radar screen in any capacity. Frank was on her radar screen—no doubt. And he’d acted on it, too, on more than one occasion, the most recent having taken place last Friday following three sloppy pitchers of beer at Uncle Henry’s after closing. Susan had sat on his lap and had eventually convinced him to come back to her place, where the sex was jubilantly, enormously entertaining, but where the morning had brought with it an oversize portion of regret and apologetics, at least as far as Frank was concerned. She’d been good-natured about it, told him to come back for a rematch, anytime, but for Frank, Susan’s persistent propositions in matters of real estate, and in matters of a more personal nature, made him uncomfortable. It was ridiculous, he sometimes thought, that he didn’t settle down with her. She’d be doing him a favor. He watched her running. She was beautiful. She could do better. She turned around at the end of the dock and began running back toward the Lil’ Champ. He took a step to the left, made sure his head was concealed behind a tall rack of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.
    Of course, there was always the chance Susan would notice Frank’s truck in front of the store and stop in to corner him, but with Susan, once she was in motion, tiny white iPod earbuds dangling from her ears, you could count on a certain amount of blindness. A blue truck, to Susan, was simply a blue truck, and she’d generally fail to make the obvious connection that the truck had an owner, and that the owner of the particular blue truck parked outside the Lil’ Champ today was Frank Bravo, the man who owned or had great influence over no less than three of the properties in Utina she’d most like to list. As if to prove this point, Susan jogged past the truck without a second glance. Gooch, seated in the cab, watched her pass, but did not attempt to attract her attention. Good boy, thought Frank.
    “Ain’t nice to avoid people.” The voice was Tip Breen’s, and it came from where the man slouched, elbows on the counter, one hamlike hip wedged against the cash register and the other precariously balanced on a straining wooden stool. Tip had owned the Lil’ Champ for the better part of the last two decades. He’d lived in Utina all his life, a hometown poster boy, for Christ’s sake, master of inertia from day one, though he’d somehow managed to