Mohawk

flask. Dallas tried his best to start a fight, but the two interlopers were far too amiable to be provoked and went away peacefully. It was a long shot, anyway.
    Dallas drank purposefully and his mood did not improve. Before long, it was obvious to him that Anne didn’t care for him as much as he could’ve wished.“Admit it,” he said suddenly, his reddening eyes full of anger.
    “Admit what?” Anne said.
    “You don’t love me.”
    “I don’t even like you when you get like this.”
    “Then admit it,” he insisted.
    Anne appealed to the others, but Di was looking carefully away and Dan somehow managed to give the impression that he really was someplace else. “Of course I love you,” Anne said.
    Dallas pondered his gin, as if it contained some melancholy truth. After a minute he said, “I can take it.”
    “Take
what
, Dallas. What can you take?”
    “That you don’t love me.”
    “I said I love you,” Anne insisted. Di said she thought it was true.
    “I know you love me,” Dallas admitted. “Except not really.”
    “You’re talking nonsense.”
    “No I’m not,” Dallas snapped, his smile full of self-pity and gin. “I bet you love Dan as much as me.”
    Anne knew Dallas had no real suspicion on that score. He was just throwing it out to be contradicted. Yet she felt herself flush, and she didn’t dare look at anyone for fear they would know.
    “It’s true,” Dallas said, throwing his arm around Dan’s shoulders. “I bet she loves you as much as me.”
    “There’s no accounting for personal taste,” Dan said.
    The remark did not make immediate sense to Dallas, and he stared at his friend for a moment before breaking into wild laughter. “I love this guy,” he roared. “You gotta love this guy. You gotta.”
    They all laughed, then, and even Dallas was relieved, though he would’ve been hard pressed to recall thathe was responsible for most of the tension in the first place. At the moment he could think only that he was a lucky fellow. His personal landscape was filled with friends and he had the prettiest girl in the place. “Come on,” he grabbed Anne by the elbow. “Let’s teach these woodchucks how to dance.”
    She followed him onto the crowded dance floor where the hillbilly band was trying hard to master the subtleties of jitterbug rhythm. “Gangway,” Dallas roared, taking his girl in his arms. And then his feet began to go, wildly, as if they possessed his very life.
    When they left the pavilion that night, Dan at the wheel, Dallas drunk and melancholy in the back seat with Anne, Diana staring out the passenger-side window at nothing in particular, they had all reached the same unspoken regret that summer was indeed over. It seemed to Dallas that his heart was about to explode with love for his girl and his friends and just about everyone he could think of. Everything was perfect, and he did not want things to change. The black lake was shimmering like ink, small waves lapping gently against the shore.
    “I love you all,” Dallas said. “I mean it.”
    “Of course you do,” Anne said.
    “I do,” he insisted. “You guys are … the best.”
    “True,” Di said. She had nursed her two drinks all night long. They had made her tipsy, but she was sober now. Dan drove slowly, competently, given the amount of alcohol he had consumed. Anne watched him from the back seat, trying to read his thoughts, wondering if he minded her going away. He had said little all night and hadn’t danced with her once, not the sort of conclusion to their reckless summer she had hoped for.Something should’ve happened, she felt. Had there been some unmistakable sign between them, then going away would have been supportable. Instead, Dan seemed miles away.
    “You’re beautiful,” Dallas told Di with such workmanlike sincerity that it sounded like false generosity. “I mean it. Good-looking, too. Damn good-looking. But you know what?”
    Everyone wanted to know.
    “I gotta stick with my girl,” he said, pulling Anne to him, ignoring her resistance to his drunken embrace. “She’s really beautiful. Really beautiful. You’re good-lookin’, Di. Don’t get me wrong. But I gotta stick with my girl.”
    Anne nudged him, hard. Dallas never suspected when he was embarrassing people. Diana knew that she was far from pretty, and compliments from a melancholy drunk were sure to have the wrong effect. “You’re bombed, Dallas. Even more than usual.”
    “I gotta stick with my