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lived alone, his two youngest sons lived nearby and often dropped in without warning. A few times, Jakey took the risk anyway, showing Cress where to park in the aspen grove, where her old Saab couldn’t be seen.
    He cooked dinner at the lodge, then came to the A-frame smelling of wood and cigarette smoke, alcohol, grilled meat. He held an ice pack to her temples, snuggled against her, a fleshy furnace, comfort incarnate.
    â€œIt’s a shame I’m so damn old,” he said. But Cress didn’t miss the athletics, often tedious, of her former, younger lovers.
    *   *   *
    â€œCressida.” His voice was graveled after sex. “What kind of name is that?”
    Well. Her mother had come to Los Angeles as a young actress and landed a role in an equity waiver production of Troilus and Cressida . “By Shakespeare?” said Cress. “Not his best. It’s long and draws these obscure parallels between Elizabethan England and the Trojan Wars.” But her mother had received wonderful reviews: Sylvia Hartley plays Cressida with crackling hauteur. “So basically, I’m named for her best role. Her finest hour.”
    â€œThat’s unique.” Jakey bit her arm. “Kind of sweet.”
    â€œExcept Cressida is this scheming nympho who flirts with everyone and sleeps with the enemy. Even in Shakespeare’s time, her name was synonymous with prostitute . So thanks a lot, Mom. Why not just name me Whore Hartley?”
    â€œOh now.” Jakey rolled all his weight on top of her. “I’m sure she didn’t mean it that way.”
    *   *   *
    Cress ducked into the lodge for milk or eggs, which Jakey sold to her for pennies. He poured her coffee or drinks, made her lunch, no charge. He sat her in a booth where he could see her as he cooked.
    He’d loose a roar when someone he knew came through the door, and he knew legions: the Meadows’ full-time and part-time residents, of course, but also the campers, hikers, hunters, fishermen, cross-country skiers, and snowmobilers who returned year after year—and the camp rangers, loggers, fire crews, and Cal Trans workers who cycled through in shifts. Men jockeyed for Jakey’s attention, became heartier, gruffer in his presence. Jakey bought drinks for friends, and to woo strangers; he cozied up to the shy, the elderly, the disapproving, the worshipful; he plied them with Yukon Jack (his liquor salesman left a promotional case); he spiked their hot chocolate, no charge. He nudged with knee, forearm, and shoulder, until his subject relaxed, capitulated, fell under his spell.
    â€œNow you , Hartley— you I can talk to,” he said. “You’re a good listener.”
    *   *   *
    â€œHe’s how old, again?” said Tillie.
    â€œBut I like that,” said Cress. “He’s the first real grown-up I’ve been with.”
    â€œAnd the diss?”
    â€œI’ve opened the boxes. That’s more than I did at Braithway.”
    Braithway Court in Pasadena was a pretty, U-shaped complex of ham-pink tourist cottages from the Arts and Crafts era. Cress had stayed there with Tillie and Edgar for three months after her orals, with the idea that she would move into the next available one-bedroom unit—Tillie was the manager. While Cress was in college and graduate school, Tillie had wandered through Europe, India, and the Middle East, then come home to Pasadena, where she found the Braithway job in the classifieds. The position came with a large second-floor apartment that had a commanding view of the court. It happened that Edgar Copperud from Karachi, post-doc in climate physics at Caltech, lived in #6. Three with one blow , Tillie liked to say: Home, job, and husband landed in a day.
    Before Cress saw Braithway for the first time, she had planned to move to Minneapolis with her grad-school boyfriend, John Bird. She and John both had