“Sure,” Sherri said—never mind that she hardly knew Arthur. There was something about him she trusted, and buying stock seemed almost as grown-up as paying for her own hotel room. “I have so much cash. May as well do something with it, because I don’t have time to spend it.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a wad of bills.

Arthur covered her hands, and her money, with his own. In a hushed voice he said, “You can’t carry cash around like that. You’ll get mugged, Sherri. Someone could follow you out of here.”

“But I didn’t want to leave it in my dorm room, and I didn’t have time to go to the bank. Besides, this is East Troy.”

“It doesn’t matter if you’re in Timbuktu, you can’t wave money around in public. Sherri, look around.”

Sherri liked the way he said her name out loud. She looked up. Sure enough, the people at the tables next to them were staring—her father’s former customers, church members, neighbors, the parents of former classmates, all of whom, Sherri imagined, had formed some kind of opinion about her job at the resort. She became even more aware of the warmth of his fingers and looked from the people in the restaurant to the knot their hands made. Anyone who’d seen the exchange might have thought they were lovers. “Here.” She pressed the money into his palms and folded his fingers around it.

“What if I run off and spend it?”

“I can tell you’re not the kind of person who would do that.”

Arthur seemed flattered, but wary. “I’m not. But you can’t just—I mean, you shouldn’t be so trusting, even though I’m basically asking you to trust me.” He tapped her hand. “I don’t want you to get taken advantage of.”

“I’m not a little kid.”

“Just—promise to be more careful. I feel protective of you for some reason, not that you can’t take care of yourself. And you know, the market is for the long haul. It’ll go up and down. If you want security, you should put this in a CD.”

“I’ve already got some of my money in a CD because I’m saving for a car, and I calculated the interest. It won’t amount to a pile of beans. This is extra.” Her father had read her a poem—how did it go? She remembered the line: “Money is external.”

“What did you just say?”

“It’s from a poem. ‘I am everywhere, / I suffer and move, my mind and my heart move / With all that move me, under the water…’”

“Oh yeah, John Berryman. I learned it in school.”

“He killed himself jumping off a bridge into a river in the middle of winter. Jesus, that just gives me the chills. How can something so sad be so beautiful?”