Starman Read Free

the man who walked into the living room. What marked him as unusual was not visible. He had a mind of exceptional depth and was particularly noted for an ability to assimilate reams of seemingly unconnected facts and reduce them to one or two simple, obvious conclusions that everyone else wondered why they hadn’t seen in the first place.
    Right now that mind was wondering whether or not Jeff Ruland, one of the better free-throw shooters in the NBA for a big man, was going to crack under the pressure of having to make a pair of potentially game-winning charity tosses.
    Mark Shermin used his right forearm to sweep his desk clear of debris. He had to do it that way because both hands were full: one with a sloppy sandwich on old french bread and the other with a bottle of beer. The beer was Hinano Export. He got an occasional case from a friend whose job it was to fly blackbirds over the French National atomic-testing site at Muroroa Atoll in the South Pacific.
    As he sat down the swept-away papers went flying. Some of them were marked in bold stenciled letters SECRET and CONFIDENTIAL . Shermin’s casual treatment of them made sense if one realized that only a few people in the world could make up or down of their contents. His cleaning lady wasn’t among that small elite.
    His attention was focused on the screen as he took a mouthful of sandwich and a swig of beer. Meat sauce trickled down his chin. He wiped it away with the back of one hand.
    Ruland made the first free throw, tying the score. The crowd went wild. When he missed the second, thereby sending the game into overtime, a collective groan issued from the speaker. Shermin added his own opinion and started in seriously on the sandwich.
    The damnphone rang. Always to Shermin it was the damnphone; never the damn phone. It continued to ring, insistent, demanding, like an electronic mistress. Eyes still locked on the TV he growled softly and picked up the receiver.
    “Call back in twenty minutes, I’m . . .”
    Whoever was on the other end managed to slip a word in before Shermin could break the connection. He made a face, reached for the remote control and muted the sound on the TV. Not many callers could make him do that. Not with the Bullets heading into overtime.
    “Yes sir? What? Sure, no problem. No, I was just watching the Bullets’ game. Overtime. Yeah, I’m sorry too. Chequamegon Bay? Where the hell’s that, up near Baltimore? Wisconsin?” He sighed, set the sandwich aside. “Yes sir, whatever you say, sir.”
    He hung up, sat thinking for a long moment. Then he turned the sound back up. Whatever it was could wait a few minutes longer. It couldn’t possibly be as important as the outcome of the game.
    The cabin was small and contemporary, woodsy without being primitive, cozy but not cramped. It fit the young woman in her twenties who was sitting in the middle of the living-room floor. Her name was Jenny Hayden and she was equally engrossed in the home movies unspooling on the screen in front of her and the bottle of wine she was drinking. The bottle was nearly empty and Jenny Hayden was more than full. But she kept watching and she kept drinking because she didn’t know how to stop doing either.
    The picture on the screen was grainy but the bay outside the cabin was easily recognizable. The camera was watching a man only slightly older than Jenny herself. He was paddling toward the camera in a canoe, mouthing amiable inanities as he approached.
    Suddenly he stood up, turned his back toward the camera, pulled down his pants, and bent over. This complex maneuver proving too much for his sense of balance, if not his sense of humor, he promptly went overboard, waving his arms wildly as he went into the lake.
    The camera searched the empty surface when without warning a face erupted in front of it and spat a mouthful of water straight into the lens. This was followed by a cockeyed, if somehow endearing, grin.
    Jenny watched silently until the screen turned