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bison…well…to anyone who gets in the way.”
    He smiled, put a hand out and caressed her shoulder. She was surprised that she didn’t shake him off right away. She was momentarily paralyzed. Did he have the power of a puffer fish – poison burning in his eyes? Was it passion – for her? Probably for the food, she thought, her cheeks flushed with discomfort.
    She backed away, the image of Anton as a bison with a human face bearing down on her.
    He shrugged and watched her golden red curls catch on the breeze and light up with a shaft of sunlight as she opened the door to leave.
    He stroked the fat gold chain around his neck, contemplating. Not his type, but magnificent hair. A woman with hair like that must be an amusing bedmate. He’d have her first. Then the policewoman. After Viola had come and gone.
    The possibility that Hy or Jamieson might turn him down never occurred to him.
    With Viola, there was no possibility at all. He would have done it, had it been required, but she wasn’t interested in that anymore. So all he had to do was be gallant, solicitous, look at her with loving eyes, masking the contempt underneath. Not lovers, but she liked it to be perceived that way and she was just as possessive and jealous.
    Anton was furious about Jared’s rip-off business on the shore. It could barely be called a business. He’d only had one customer, who’d mistaken it for a fish-and-chip shop, paid the ten dollars, and been surprised to find a frozen herring in a plastic bag shoved in his hand. He had left, bewildered.
    Anton was determined to get rid of the eyesore before his own customers came. He knew enough about Jared that money would talk.
    He waited for Jared to open up one day, as usual around noon. Patting the pocket where he’d put the cash, Anton strolled down the lane. He didn’t want to appear too hurried or anxious, as if he cared. Jared, though not very bright, wasn’t stupid about opportunity when it came knocking.
    He was leaning up against the cookhouse, smoking a cigarette, watching Anton come down the lane, and wondering what he wanted. When he heard, he put on a show of outrage, but his mind whirred.
    â€œBuy my business? The ancestral cookhouse?” That’s how Jared often referred to the place. It was sarcasm, not pride nor fondness. The cookhouse was the only inheritance from his ancestors, along with a falling-down house. His mother and father had sold the beachfront and ocean- view lots, and had promptly smoked and drunk the money away. If they hadn’t done it, he would have. The only reason he still had the cookhouse and the shore property was that it was on a dune. Building on a dune was now against the law, though he’d tried selling it anyway.
    â€œNo way.” Jared had been talking with the cigarette in his mouth. Now he spat it out.
    â€œNot the cookhouse. The business. I don’t need the physical plant.”
    Jared looked around him in every direction. Plant? What did he know about plants? At one time, Jared had operated a hydroponic grow-op out of the cookhouse, but all evidence of that had been cleared away by the police.
    â€œWhatever you’ve got inside. The museum.”
    Jared looked down at his boots. Kicked at the sand.
    â€œDint get around to the museum yet.”
    â€œOh well. Oh well, then.” Anton thought that perhaps he could knock down the price. “What do you have?”
    â€œThem fish. I got them fish.”
    â€œWhat fish?”
    Jared combed his fingers through his hair, surprised at how short it was. Chrystal had convinced him to cut it. He still wouldn’t cut the back.
    â€œThem flyin’ fish.”
    â€œFlying fish? You mean the ones that came from the sky? That’s all been explained. In the papers.”
    â€œI don’t read the papers.”
    â€œIt was a stunt, to advertise my restaurant. They were dropped from a plane.”
    Jared shook his head,