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warning.
    “There’s plenty of sleaze down here need defending.”
    “And what?” she asked him, holding her coffee cup just below her face. “Live here at Walden Pond. Cook on one burner?”
    “I’d consider a microwave, you move down here.”
    “You’re just letting your androgen do your thinking. You know you don’t want a woman living here. You’re the Gandhi of Key Largo, a loincloth and sandals and one burner. Introduce a blow dryer into this monastery and you’d freak.”
    “I’ve been considering the virtues of blowing dry.”
    “It’s better visiting you.”
    Thorn said, “Who am I, your once-a-month stud? Fish and screw and get back to the city?”
    “I wouldn’t call you a stud exactly,” Sarah said, smiling. “Thorn, Thorn. Let’s just go with it, step at a time.”
    He said, “What’s Kate been telling you about me anyway? That I’m some hermit? Don’t get involved with me?”
    “She tells me you’re a guy who’s made himself a paradise out here, making lures for the best bonefishermen in the world, and you’re happy for the first time in your life.”
    “I’ve been happy lately.” Thorn smiled at her. “It’s an interesting feeling. Grows on you.”
    She stood up from the table, brushed crumbs of toast from the lap of her dress. “Well, I’d be happy to hear more. I want to know you. You know that. I’d like to hear the unexpurgated saga of Thorn.” An awkward smile.
    “That’s nice. I like that.”
    “I’m interested,” she said.
    “That’s nice,” Thorn said. “I like it when you’re interested. You turn me on when you’re interested.”
    “Not now,” she said. “I’m cutting it close as it is.”
    Thorn watched her gather her clothes. Roosters were waking in his woods. The air was already changing from balmy to muggy. He watched her pack her things in her oversize straw purse.
    Thorn said, “Maybe this is it. What if this is as unexpurgated as I get?”
    “There’s more to you. I know there is.”
    “OK, I’ll work on it, come up with something spicy.”
    “The truth’ll do fine,” she said.
    “I don’t know,” said Thorn. He moved over to the doorway, stood there, his eyes straying to the bay. “Maybe anonymous is better. You stir things up, go dredging around, things can get murky.”
    “We’re at the point,” Sarah said. “Either we get to know each other better, or we stall out, start sliding away from each other.”
    “Yeah,” Thorn said. “I guess we are.” He scratched at his beard, looked at her there on the edge of his bed, the straw purse in her lap. “There’s a couple of things I could tell you,” he said. “It’d help you know me better.”
    “Yeah?” Her hands laced in her lap, as if she were about to lift them to her face and pray.
    “I don’t want us. to stall out,” he said.
    “Me either.”
    “OK,” he said, nodding his head. “Next time. I show you mine, you show me yours.”
    She released her breath, stood, and came across to him. “Now you’re all serious again,” she said. With a finger at each corner of his mouth, she drew his lips into a smile. She put a quick, dry kiss on his cheek. “I’ll see you Thursday night, the wood rat meeting.”
    He backed away a step, said with a grin, “When you and Kate are finished saving all the wood rats, what then? Buy them all little leisure suits?”
    “Oh, God,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Not you, too.”
    He followed her outside and stood out on the porch and watched her walk downstairs and get into her Trans Am. That car bothered him. It didn’t suit her. Too flashy, too powerful. He waved to her as she swung the car around and started out. He listened to the V-eight rumble down his road and kept listening until he lost it in the general highway noise.

4
    T HE K EY L ARGO E LEMENTARY PARKING LOT was filled. Kate parked her VW convertible on the grass out near the highway. Top down. Thorn asked her if she wanted to leave it like that. She looked