Mitch laughed—it made Sherri feel good to make him laugh. “You’d love Venice Beach. It’s like this”—he gestured at the pavilion on the waterfront just beyond the window and the crowds of people walking past—“only you can surf, and it’s sunny all year long.”

“California sounds perfect!”

“It is. Hate to say it, but everything is just better there.”

This sentiment, so definitive and absolute, appealed to Sherri, who believed there was an established collective conscious she was only beginning to tap into, one that ranked people and places and behaviors from worst to best.

A freckly guy named Rye with brassy hair and madras shorts invited Mitch and Sherri to see the lake on his wooden Chris-Craft. They jumped at the opportunity, especially Sherri. She hadn’t been on a lake since the night of her party at Arthur’s, and summer and lakes were interwoven in her mind.

Rye tooled around the shore in his fancy wooden boat, skirting the ends of the long piers that stuck out into the lake. Just beyond them, walkers strolled along the community footpath that circled the shoreline. He pointed out all the big estates perched on grassy bluffs, each one different in style—some old-timey and Victorian and others glassy and modern, but all grand and impressive. When she was a girl and her family had taken a tour of the lake, she had been awed by the homes. “These houses are for just one family?” Sherri had asked her father. “I’ll bet they’re mortgaged to the hilt,” he said. Her mother was not impressed. “Too many bathrooms to clean.”

“They call this the Newport of the Midwest,” Rye said to Mitch. “You’ve got movie stars out West, and here we’ve got captains of industry. Sears, Wrigley, Maytag, Schwinn. All those families have houses on the lake.” Rye waved to the sailors in their fancy boats. “Oh hey, Mr. Levy,” he said. “Hey Mrs. Pierce. Great day, huh?” It was clear from the easy, familiar interactions that Rye had known his lake neighbors his whole life. The culture of the lake was easy. It was a place where the playing field between kids and adults was more level. You could buy your way into this world, sure, but it was better to be born into that net of connections.

Mitch sat with his hands behind his head and nodded as if he knew everything already. Sherri sympathized with Rye. There was something about Mitch that made them both want to impress him.

“See that?” Rye pointed at a massive boathouse built to resemble a lake steamer that sat in front of a Spanish-style mansion. “That’s called the SS No-Go. The people who own the place, the Bells, created the soap opera The Young and the Restless.”