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spoke at Clint’s store, and only about business and trivia. No women exc. whores if you have to. I thus far hadn’t had to. Two drinks every day before dinner, otherwise none. The hard part was remembering to take the drinks. Sometimes I forgot them. I never had more than two, and only drank them because it was part of my decalogue. Three meals every day. Invariably. Exercise regularly, swimming and calisthenics, keep in shape. Plenty sleep, sunshine. No problem there. Don’t go anywhere exc. movies. The nearest movie was on Key West, and I had no desire to see it. Or anything else. When in doubt, do nothing. Five words to live by—but I could have dropped all but the last two. Because I couldn’t remember the last time I had been in doubt.
    I worked up a good sweat rowing, so as I drew close to my island I put up the oars and uncapped a jug of bottled water and took a long drink. Before I got going again I had a good look at my island—when you row you see where you’ve been, not where you’re going. I reached for the oars, then stopped abruptly and looked over my shoulder again. There was something large and white at the far end of my island, the opposite end from the shack. This was unusual, as most driftwood and flotsam washed ashore at my end. I couldn’t make out what it was, and after a few minutes of rowing I stopped and had another look.
    It was a boat. And it hadn’t washed ashore at all. Someone had steered it there.
    Why?
    This was a threat, I thought. A very real threat. No one had ever come to my island before. No boat had so much as approached it, let alone landed there.
    Until now.
    Why?
    It could possibly be Gaines, I thought. Maybe the old wino hadn’t died, maybe he had gone away somewhere, and had now decided to return and take possession of the shack again. That would be a problem, but not an impossible one. I would have to kill Gaines, of course. Then I would either bury him somewhere on the island or put him back on his boat. Anything buried can be dug up. I would kill him by holding his head underwater, I decided, and then I would put him on his fucking white motorboat and take it a few miles out with my rowboat in tow. Then I would sink his boat with him on it and row back to the island.
    Nothing to it, if it was Gaines. But suppose it was someone else?
    I tried to imagine who it might be. Clint had guessed that the state owned the island, which seemed possible. If so, they might have sent some nuisance to make sure that I wasn’t running a whorehouse or a gambling casino there. Any official attention would be a pain, but I could probably get around it.
    If the state didn’t own it, the actual owner might be interested in finding out who lived in the shack. He might want to sell me the island, or rent it to me. That was all right. Or he might have decided to build on it, or to sell it to someone else. That was not all right. If it proved to be the case, I had a problem. I could kill this man, whoever he was, but it wouldn’t be as simple as killing an old wino. I would have to work it out very carefully.
    I resumed rowing. Other possibilities suggested themselves. Someone might have decided to be neighborly, and a few impolite words and phrases would put a stop to that. Or there might be rumors in circulation about the bearded religious fanatic with a store of buried pirate gold. That, I thought, was all I needed. Start killing the ones who showed up and the rumors would only grow. Behave oddly and the rumors would be reinforced. How, then, could I handle that sort of visitor?
    This was a threat. Worse, it was an unclear threat.
    I was in doubt.
    When in doubt—
    I breathed deeply, relieved. When in doubt, do nothing. That was the answer. I would do nothing until the doubt cleared, and perhaps the threat would turn out to be no threat at all, and if it was I would worry about it and handle it when the time came.
    Meanwhile, what? Stay out on the water? That wasn’t doing nothing, that