Ruth drank some beer. “I’m looking for a man named Dominick.”

“That’d be me, sir.”

Ruth said, “I understand you own a strong truck, do some hauling.”

“That I do.”

Down the other end, one of the men rapped the edge of a coin off the bar top.

“Just a second,” the bartender said. “Them’s some thirsty gents, sir.”

He walked back down the bar and listened to the two men for a moment, nodding his large head, and then he went to the taps and after that to the bottles, and Ruth felt the two men watching him, so he watched them back.

The one on the left was strapping tall, dark-haired and dark-eyed, and so glamorous (it was the first word that popped into Babe’s head) that Babe wondered if he’d seen him in the flickers or in the pages of the papers devoted to returning war heroes. Even from down the other end of a long bar, his simplest gestures—raising a glass to his lips, tapping an unlit cigarette on the wood—achieved a grace that Ruth associated with men of epic deeds.

The man beside him was much smaller and less distinct. He was milky and dour and the bangs of his mousy brown hair kept falling over his forehead; he brushed them back with an impatience Ruth judged feminine. He had small eyes and small hands and an air of perpetual grievance.

The glamorous one raised his glass. “A great fan of your athleticism, Mr. Ruth.”

Ruth raised his glass and nodded his thanks. The mousy one didn’t join in.

The strapping man clapped his friend on the back and said, “Drink up, Gene, drink up,” and his voice was the baritone of a great stage actor hitting the back row.

Dominick placed fresh drinks in front of them and they returned to their conversation, and Dominick came back to Ruth and topped off his whiskey, then leaned back against the cash register. “So you need something hauled, do you, sir?”

Babe sipped his whiskey. “I do.”

“And what would that be, Mr. Ruth?”

Babe took another sip. “A piano.”

Dominick crossed his arms. “A piano. Well, that’s not too—”

“From the bottom of a lake.”

Dominick didn’t say anything for a minute. He pursed his lips. He stared past Ruth and seemed to listen for the echo of an unfamiliar sound.

“You’ve got a piano in a lake,” he said.

Ruth nodded. “Actually it’s more like a pond.”

“A pond.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, which is it, Mr. Ruth?”

“It’s a pond,” Babe said eventually.

Dominick nodded in a way that suggested past experience with such a problem and Babe felt a thump of hope in his chest. “How does a piano manage to get itself submerged in a pond?”

Ruth fingered his whiskey. “You see, there was this party. For kids. Orphans. My wife and I held it last winter. You see, we were having work done on our house, so we’d rented a cottage on a lake not too far away.”