Stenko moaned with the memory.
“Right, you remember. So instead of you teaching me dad to son, you get that ape Charlie Sera to take me out on the lake. That goon didn’t know fishing from cathedral architecture! He told me to bait my own hook, and he spent the whole time drinking from a flask and shooting at rising trout with a thirty-eight. Boy, what a great bonding experience.”
“Sorry. I didn’t know about it until later.”
“Right, you were
“It was a five-room vacation home, if I recall,” Stenko said patiently, “the best available. It wasn’t like you were in some shack with an outdoor toilet. Besides, I thought you
“I despise nature,” Robert said, “thanks to you.”
“But . . .”
“I want to save the planet,” Robert said. “That’s different.”
“THERE SHE IS,” Robert said, taking the last gulp from his drink and gesturing at a woman checking in with his glass.
“Who?” she asked.
“Patty Johnston, the bride to be.”
Tall, very thin, thick auburn hair, and green eyes. She had a graceful way of moving and a quick smile. She sure had a lot of luggage, though: two bell-stands worth. The hotel staff hovered around her while she got her key. She was with another woman who looked like an older version of Johnston.
“She just arrived, and that must be her mother,” Robert said with a smirk. “She doesn’t know her future husband is in the bar with Stenko.”
“She’s pretty.”
“I could have her if I wanted to,” Robert said. “The easiest pickings in the world is a woman about to be married. They always want one last blast. And especially if they’re going to get married to a guy named Stumpf.”
She looked at Robert. His eyes were glassy, and she realized he must have had more to drink than she thought.
“What?” he said, noticing her staring at him.
“Don’t look at me that way,” he said. “You’re just a kid. You shouldn’t even be here. And you wouldn’t be here if it were up to me.”
Robert stood up a little unevenly, smoothed his chinos with both hands and raked his fingers through his streaked blond hair. “Stay put and watch this.”
She watched. He shot out his cuffs and detoured on his way to the bar via the front desk. He succeeded in catching the eye of Patty Johnston. Robert flashed his brilliant smile, said, “You must be the bride because you’ve got a wonderful glow about you.”
Patty Johnston looked at him as if he had something in his teeth. Her mother put on a stern face and glared at him.
“I’d be pleased to buy you a drink later,” Robert pushed on.
Patty Johnston dismissed him with an embarrassed smile and turned back to the front desk.
Robert’s shoulders slumped and his neck turned red. He let a beat pass, then continued his way toward the bar. From her overstuffed chair in the lobby, she almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
When he came back to his chair, the bride-to-be and her mother were gone.
She said, “I guess that didn’t work out.”
He shook his head as if harboring secret knowledge. “You didn’t see how she looked at me. She looked me over, girlie, and Patty liked what she saw. I could have pursued it, and she would have let me. If she wasn’t with her mother, it would be a whole different outcome, believe me.”
He sipped his drink, trying to act nonchalant. “But I figure Stenko’s working the groom, so why bother?”
Then he did something she was getting used to: he withdrew his laptop from his computer case and opened it on his thighs.
“Stenko got all the numbers from the groom,” Robert said, as much to himself as to her. He handed her the spiral notebook opened to a page filled with scrawled words and numbers.
“Read this to me so I can input the data,” he said.
“It doesn’t make sense.”
“It doesn’t have to make sense to you,” he said, annoyed. “It makes sense to me. Now just start at the top and read out each entry while I put it into the database.”
She sighed. “Twenty international guests from Europe.”
He said, “That’s eight thousand nine hundred fifty KM each. Seventeen hundred seventy-two KG of carbon per. Seventeen thousand nine hundred KM total, seventy tons of carbon total. Okay, next.”
