green stuff is called grass. And I know you spent the first nine months of your life tumbling around in a cement mixer, and after that you smoked a cigar and worked sixteen hours in the sun and cut your own umbilical cord with a pair of tin-snips, but I wanted you to see what the rest of us get to enjoy.”
“Are you finished?” North said as he opened the A-frame’s door and led them inside.
“I just thought you’d like to see the world the way the rest of us frail, lowly mortals see it.”
“This is longer than your usual spiel. You must be still walking off that boner I gave you.”
“That’s right: we lowly mortals of flesh and bone who grew up playing tee ball and climbing on jungle gyms and going on dates instead of wearing a hardhat and chewing through steel and eating a lug nut for dessert.”
North arched an eyebrow, fighting to keep a smile off his face. “A lug nut for dessert? That’s new.”
“I thought of it after watching you demolish that ice cream sandwich. You know. The one you thought I didn’t see you buy at the Casey’s.”
Heat prickled up North’s neck and along his cheekbones. “So, the son of a bitch was here, right? What was his name? Donovan?”
“It’s a Bluetooth speaker,” Shaw said. “The range isn’t that good. Probably ten yards.”
“So he parks the golf cart on the far side of the house,” North said, studying the reinforced speaker, noting the broken casing where Quentin had tried to silence the barking with a hammer. “He plays a recording of the dog, something he knows will upset Quentin. But he doesn’t come inside. He doesn’t confront Quentin. He sits out there while Quentin tries to hammer this thing to shit, and when that doesn’t work, Quentin freaks out so badly that he has a fit or passes out or, at the very least, makes a really good show of it.”
“He swooned,” Shaw said. “You probably never heard that word on the job site, but it’s perfect for this situation.”
North eyed him, letting the moment hang until Shaw bit his lip and offered a guilty grin. “You are paddling as hard as you can up shit creek, aren’t you?”
Shaw’s grin got bigger.
“So,” North said, “did Donovan stay outside because we showed up? Or did he stay outside because it was part of the plan?”
“Plan,” Shaw said.
“What makes you say that?”
Shaw tugged at his bun of chestnut hair, checking it, and frowned off into space. “This wasn’t the first fight. Quentin called Donovan his husband, then corrected himself and called him ‘my ex.’ To me, that means a recent separation. Maybe not even an official separation. But it’s also not the first fight. And it’s definitely not the first fight that touches on the puppy; Quentin knew what was happening even though all Donovan sent was the sound of barking.”
The description hit a little too close to home for North; he crossed his arms and said, “Quentin knows what Donovan wants, and Donovan is extorting it from him by threatening the dog.”
Shaw nodded. “Sounds right.”
“Well, why didn’t Quentin tell us that?”
“Because he was too busy swooning.”
“Or because he didn’t feel like we needed to know. Let’s go find out what’s going on.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Shaw said. “You’re probably confused. Or you forgot, even though I just told you what it means. Swooning is when you pass out. It’s a more literary term.”
They let themselves out of the A-frame and began the walk back to the Aldrich lake house. The September sun threw their shadows behind them, over the thick, well-kept grass, cutting scallops into the water. The soft slap of the lake against the shore mixed with the first light stirrings of a breeze, and North had to admit that this whole place was kind of nice. If, that was, you didn’t mind being fifty miles from anything you could call civilization.
“I’m the one who graduated college.”
Shaw blinked, dragged out of his thoughts. “What?”
“I know literary terms. I’m the one who got an A on the poetic devices and figurative language terms in Dr. Augustina’s class.”
“That was one test.”
“And you got a D on it, Shaw. A 63%.”
“Ok, but, I just didn’t study. And anyway, you were the one who kept pronouncing Goethe go-eeth-ee.”
“Oh,” North said in a low voice. “Keep paddling.”
“It was so embarrassing. Dr. Augustina kept staring at you, trying to correct you, but you wouldn’t stop talking about Go-eeth-ee.”
“Keep the fuck paddling.”
“It