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have extra money this month in case you need a deposit.”
    Cal stood like a statue as the world passed by on the street below. The English world, of which he’d only marginally joined the fringe. “No, thanks. Save your cash, Pete. I didn’t use the phone much anyway. Don’t know anybody to call ’cept you.”
    “What about that chick you were seeing? What was her name…Carol? Karen?”
    “Kristen.” Cal answered without emotion. For a moment he remembered his first summer in Cleveland when they had met. Kristen . With her shiny blond hair and green eyes, she’d worn tank tops so low cut that the lace of her bra sometimes showed. And her tight blue jeans had left almost nothing to a man’s imagination. Yet his imagination still managed to work overtime. They had so much fun together—going to dinner, taking a cruise boat along the Cuyahoga River, and kissing at the top of the Terminal Tower.
    “What happened to Kristen?” Pete stood waiting for an answer.
    Cal’s mind wandered back. “What do you think? When they laid me off, I didn’t have much spending cash, and she lost interest fast. Girls up here don’t consider taking walks to the lake, riding the train downtown, or sitting on the roof to watch the sun set much of a date.”
    “Some do,” Pete said. “You need to meet a better class of females, old buddy.”
    Cal rolled his eyes, a mannerism he’d perfected since turning English. “Yeah, I’ll get right on that.”
    “Speaking of walks…let’s do it. Let’s take a walk by the lake.”
    “It ain’t across the street anymore,” he snapped.
    “I know that. I’ll drive us over. No offense, Cal, but your apartment gives me the creeps. It looks like somebody elderly died here and you moved in as soon as EMTs carried the person out. And you haven’t changed a thing.”
    Cal glanced around at his scavenged furnishings and headed for his coat. Maybe a walk would do him some good. It sure beat falling asleep on his uncomfortable sofa.

     
    Pete parked his SUV in the deserted lot. Cal looked out the window. To the left was the swimming beach, empty except for about five hundred seagulls standing in neat rows. During the summer months, families and couples set up chairs or spread blankets on the sand to spend a day in the sun. On the right, expensive boats of all shapes and sizes filled the marina, waiting to be taken out on smooth blue water. But today every one of them had been pulled up and stored for winter. Both sights never failed to fill him with longing.
    Cal had never been sailing, but from the balcony of his first apartment in Cleveland he could watch them bobbing in calm water or sleekly racing with the wind on Sunday morning regattas. How free, how powerful a man must feel at the helm of a ship.
    “No boats out today,” said Pete, scanning the horizon as though he had read Cal’s mind. “Weather’s almost nice enough, but a storm could blow up in no time on a shallow lake like Erie. Did you ever hear of the Edmund Fitzgerald ?”
    Cal shook his head as they walked down the path spanning the beach area. Birds took flight just beyond their footfalls, annoyed by the intrusion. Pete launched into a story about an ore freighter that had floundered and sank during an early winter storm on one of the other Great Lakes. As interesting as Pete’s tale was, Cal found his mind wandering to his first year in the big city and his even bigger plans. He had been so full of himself.
    “The higher a man thinks he gets means that much longer his fall back down.” His daed ’s warning rang hollowly in his ears. Cal should have buckled down and taken night classes as his foreman had suggested. He’d needed to learn the building codes that Englischers were so fond of. He should have saved money when the paychecks were substantial instead of buying drinks in loud clubs for people he didn’t know.
    He should have made a better attempt to fit in with the other employees. If he wanted to live in the