Chapter One

Before Lyle and Lola Czpejaczyk built their house in the Raintree Estates subdivision, they legally eliminated five consonants from their surname, decided on gentrified Scandinavian decor, and met a man named Jackson Spey who convinced them to add a highly unusual, subterranean room.

Their house plans had already been drawn that day at McKinley Beach, that lapis and alabaster and crystal day on the shores of Lake Michigan, where they first met Spey. Already there when they arrived, he sat placidly, expectantly, on the Lifestyle section of the Sunday Journal Sentinel .

Dropping to the sand some ten yards from him, the recently dubbed Pecks had just finished a stroll around the marina, where they'd been feeding yet another of the many mouths of their shared fantasy.

"That's gotta be living, hey?" Lyle said, waiting for his wife to drape their blanket perfectly over the pocked sand. He glanced at the lake, found it too bright, and looked down at his deck shoes, near which Lola's hands were smoothing and flicking.

"Someday," she said. It was the basic tenet of the faith that kept their fantasy alive.

Lyle had fallen in love with the Mistress , a cabin cruiser out of Waukegan; Lola, with the sloop Bon Ami from Saugatuck.

"Where's Saugatuck, anyway?" Lola asked.

"Saugatuck..." Lyle pondered, shrugged, sat. "Maybe up north somewhere."

"Sounds like it should be on Long Island."

"Oh?" Vaguely puzzled, Lyle squinted at his wife. "Why do you say that?"

Lola oiled her arms. "I don't know. I guess because there are places out there with names like that."

"Long Island..." Lyle squinted at the lake, trying to envision a trail from there to the Atlantic. He quickly gave it up. "I doubt it."

Spey, who'd been watching them, turned away.

Lola pulled two bottles of mineral water, two self-seal bags of pita sandwich wedges, and two magazines from the cooler.

"Damned sun is frying my eyes," Lyle said, "even with the Vuarnets. It's all this reflection."

"Here, put your hat on." Lola dug it from her canvas shoulder bag. "And put some oil on your legs. You know how easily the tops of them burn. At least," she said as a comforting afterthought, "your shoulders are covered."

Lyle girded himself against the weather. "Man, imagine spending two, three weeks just harbor-hopping along the lakeshore. A layover in Door County. Back again. Leisurely pace. We wouldn't need a pool if we had a boat."

"Oh, yes, we would." Lola licked an alfalfa sprout from her knuckle. Before she resumed nibbling she frowned at the backs of her fingers, then brushed them clean of sand. "Having a boat wouldn't mean we'd have a lake at our backdoor. A pool is more convenient."

"Yeah, true. But a boat would still be great." Lyle set his Forbes , unopened, on his thighs.

"Sure would." Lola brushed both hands clean of crumbs. She picked up Martha Stewart Living . "You should eat your sandwich before it goes bad. In this heat..."

"I will."

Copyright © 2005 K. A. Schuster