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Native American accessories.
    â€œDon’t let Jakey’s age put you off,” said Julie. “Some of the happiest marriages I know are May–Decembers.”
    Marriage! Cress hadn’t gone to Minneapolis with John Bird in part because she’d wanted to avoid the courtship-leads-to-marriage track. Wasn’t there romance that flowered differently, that didn’t morph right into marriage, pregnancy, childrearing, and monogamy for its own sake? What was the sexual revolution for, if not to allow for more varied experiences, a wider range of happiness? Cress was in no hurry to re-create family life—at least not as she’d known it. How surprised she’d been when Tillie—the fastest girl in high school, the first of their group to move out of her parents’ house into her own apartment, the first to live with a man—was also the first to turn up married. Was that where Tillie’s sexual curiosity, energy, and naughty laughter were pointed all along? Why? Women no longer had to pick one man, set up house, and reproduce. Though setting up house with Jakey might be fun. For a while, anyway.
    â€œBy the way, I haven’t told my parents I’m seeing Jakey yet,” said Cress.
    â€œThey won’t hear a peep from me.”
    A small, late lunch rush was in progress at the lodge. Jakey came out to pour them each a glass of white wine. “You gals set the world straight yet?” He nipped Cress’s neck, went back to the grill.
    A man at the end of the bar stood and walked over. “Is that Sharon Hartley, all grown up?”
    â€œCressida,” she said, as an older, rheumy-eyed Reggie Thornton toasted her with his coffee cup. His pompadour had deflated, his white hair sat close to his skull, in perfect waves.
    â€œCressida Hartley. I’ll be darned. You up for the weekend, Cressida?”
    â€œA couple months, actually. And you? Visiting old friends?”
    â€œStill have my place by the pond,” he said.
    A convicted killer—that made her shy. But Reggie was cheerful and friendly; he asked about her parents, her sister, about the new cabin going up. “I knew Cressida when she was a skinny little sprout about yea high,” he told Julie as he walked behind the bar. He filled his coffee cup with bourbon from the well, then grabbed the wine bottle and topped off their glasses to the brims.
    *   *   *
    â€œHow do you kill two people driving drunk and still drink?” Cress asked Julie on their way home.
    â€œHe’s not supposed to,” said Julie. “The coffee cup’s so the sheriff and rangers won’t catch him violating parole.”
    Cress herself was drunk. A nasty Chablis-yellow ache pulsed behind her eyes, and all she wanted was a dark room, ice on her face, and a gallon of water. Julie had left her walking stick against the bar, and Cress, noticing, was so grateful not to have its metronomic accompaniment all the way home, she said nothing. She walked quickly, to get there, and she talked, too, to distract herself from her headache. Art, she told Julie, had been her first major, but so damn hard. Then economics had come so easily. Her boyfriend in college was an econ major, and she’d just taken an intro class so they could talk. But the first econ paper she wrote won the department’s yearly essay prize—her boyfriend never forgave her for that. She’d entered his territory and bested him. It broke them up. But who knew she’d had a talent for economic theory? Even before she graduated, she’d had a paper published—when she was still a fine-arts major. Only when she was applying to grad school did her painting professor sit her down. Maybe think twice, he said. Frankly, he—her teacher—didn’t think she had the temperament for life in the art world. (He said temperament, but she knew he meant talent.)
    â€œIf art’s your calling,” Julie said,