"Jeeeeem!" Katya said, and held out her arms with another of her blinding smiles.

Kate looked down at her and said, "I'm saving you from yourself right now," and marched back to Bobby and Dinah's table.

"Thanks, Kate," Dinah said, receiving Katya in a four-point landing.

"My pleasure," Kate said.

Bobby fished keys out of his pocket. "Come to dinner?"

"I'd like to," Kate said, looking around. "I wanted to talk to somebody first—hey, where'd Ruthe and Dina go?"

Dinah followed her gaze. "I don't know; I don't see them. They must have left. Did you see John Letourneau trip over Dina's cane?"

Bobby threw back his head and roared with laughter. "Did I! That Dina."

"She didn't do it on purpose, Bobby," Dinah said.

Bobby roared again. "Given their history, who knows? And who cares anyway? It was fun to watch John Letourneau fall off his high horse. Dignity, always dignity," he said, and started to laugh again. "Ever see Singing in the Rain, Kate? Best goddamn movie ever to come out of Hollywood."

"About thirteen times, all at your house," Kate said.

"We can watch it again tonight," he said, waving an expansive arm. "After dinner. So you coming?"

She shook her head. "I've got to talk to Dina and Ruthe."

"Caribou stew," he said.

She wavered, always susceptible to an appeal to her stomach.

"Plus, you need a haircut," Dinah said, giving her a critical look.

Kate shook her head. "I'd like to, but I really have to talk to Dina and Ruthe. It's about Dan. Rain check?"

Dan appeared at the Roadhouse door just as Kate reached it. He saw her, opened his mouth, and then something behind her caught his eye. He smiled, then laughed out loud when Christie, in a floor-mounted launch of which Katya would have approved, landed against his midsection, her legs prewrapped around his waist, and planted a long, intense kiss on his lips. Kate stepped around them. As she passed, Christie raised her head and their eyes met.

Kate looked around to see who the claim was being staked in front of, and she saw Jim Chopin watching. She looked back at Christie, who smiled and buried her head in Dan's shoulder.

Kate shut the door behind her with more force than necessary.

The Roadhouse was twenty-seven miles down the road from Niniltna, nine feet and three inches outside the Niniltna Native Association's tribal jurisdiction, and therefore not subject to the dry law currently in effect. Or was it damp? Kate thought it might have changed, yet again, at the last election from dry to damp, or maybe it was from wet to damp. It seemed like every time she checked her mail in Niniltna, either the Alaska Beverage Distributors or whatever passed at the moment for the local temperance league had someone standing outside the post office with a petition.

Kate couldn't understand it herself. The first time Niniltna passed a dry law—no liquor allowed to be owned or sold within tribal boundaries—alcohol-related crime dropped 87 percent the first month and Trooper Jim Chopin was made conspicuous by his absence, a consummation devoutly to be wished for, in Kate's opinion. When it went to damp at the next election—no one could sell liquor, but people could have it for private consumption in their homes—the stats went back up and Jim was more in evidence. When it went to wet—liquor allowed to be sold within tribal boundaries—incidents of child abuse, spousal abuse, assault, burglary, rape, and even murder all went through the roof and Jim spent more time in the Park than he did in Tok, where his post was based.