Rules of Prey

that’s nice.”
    “I think—I’m not sure—but I think I’m going to get the best weavings I ever did out of this stuff,” Carla said. She frowned. “One of the problems with the form is that the best of it is symbolic but the best art is antisymbolic.”
    “Right,” Lucas said. He flopped back in the leaves and looked up at the faultless blue sky. A light south wind rippled the surface of the lake.
    “Sounds like baloney, doesn’t it?” she asked, smiling, her face crinkling at the corners of her eyes.
    “Sounds like business,” he said. He turned his head and saw a cluster of small green plants pushing up through the dead leaves. He reached out and picked a few of the shiny green leaves.
    “Close your eyes,” he said, holding his hand out toward her and crumbling the leaves in his fingertips. She closed her eyes and he held the crumbled leaves beneath her nose. “Now, sniff.”
    She sniffed and smiled and opened her eyes. “It’s the candy,” she said in delight. “Wintergreen?”
    “Yeah. It grows all over the place.” She took the crumbledleaves from him and sniffed again. “God, it smells like the outdoors.”
    “You still want to go back?”
    “Yes,” she said, a note of regret strong in her voice. “I have to work. I’ve got a hundred drawings and I have to start doing something with them. And I called my gallery in Minneapolis and I’ve sold a couple of good pieces. I’ve got money waiting.”
    “You could almost start making a living at this,” Lucas said wryly.
    “Almost. They tell me a man from Chicago, a gallery owner, saw some of my pieces. He wants to talk to me about a deal. So I’ve got to get going.”
    “You can come back. Anytime.”
    Carla stopped drawing for a minute and patted his leg. “Thanks. I’d like to come back in the spring, maybe. You’ve no idea what this month has done for me. God, I’ve got so much work, I can’t even fathom it. I needed this.”
    “Go back Tuesday night?”
    “Fine.”
    Lucas rolled to his feet and walked down to the dock, looked at his boat. It was a fourteen-foot fiberglass tri-hull with a twenty-five-horsepower Johnson outboard mounted on the back. A small boat, wide open, just right for fishing musky. There was a scum line around the hull. The boat had not been used enough during the fall.
    He walked back up the bank. “I’m going to have to take the boat out before we leave,” he said. “It hasn’t been getting much use. The maddog has killed the fall.”
    “And I’ve been too busy walking in the woods to go out on the water,” Carla said simply.
    “Want to go fishing? Now?”
    “Sure. Give me ten minutes to finish this.” She looked up and across the lake. “God, what a day.”
     
    In the afternoon, after lunch, they walked back into the woods. Carla carried the pistol on her belt. At the base of the hill, firing at the cutbank from twenty yards, she puteighteen consecutive shots into an area the size of a large man’s hand. They were dead center on the silhouette she’d sketched in the sand. When she fired the last round, she put the muzzle of the pistol to her lips and nonchalantly blew off the nonexistent smoke.
    “That’s decent,” Lucas said.
    “Decent? I thought it was pretty great.”
    “Nope. Just decent,” Lucas repeated. “If you ever have to use it, you’ll have to make the decision in a second or so, maybe in the dark, maybe with the guy rushing you. It’ll be different.”
    “Jeez. What’s the use?”
    “Wait a minute,” Lucas said hastily. “I don’t mean to put you down. That’s really pretty good. But don’t get a big head.”
    “Like I said, pretty great.” She grinned up at him. “What do you think of the holster? Pretty neat, huh?” She had sewn a rose into the black nylon flap.
     
    Much later that night she blew in his navel and looked up and said, “This could be the best vacation I ever had. Including the next couple of days. I want to ask you a question, but I don’t want to ruin it.”
    “It won’t. I can’t think of any question that would ruin it.”
    “Well. First we have a preamble.”
    “I love preambles; I hope you finish with a postscript. Even an index would be okay, or maybe—”
    “Shut up. Listen. Besides being a vacation, I’ve gotten an enormous amount of work done up here. I think I’ve broken through. I think I’m going to be an artist like I’ve never been an artist before. But I’ve met men like you . . . there’s a