“I know!” she calls to him. “We should go swimming!” For a minute, everyone is quiet. We all look out at the swimming pool. The Mizeraks have it lit from beneath, and it is a thin rectangle of turquoise wavering in the night.

“Yeah!” Junior bawls, holding his arms up for a touchdown. “Everybody into the pool!” The throng pushes out through the sliding doors, and I am carried with it.

Outside, the snow quiets everybody down as it touches our faces and disappears into the pool with a soft hiss. The impulse to jump in the water has just about died when Junior comes out of the house naked, gets up on the diving board, and poses like a statue of a Greek god.

“No clothes in the pool!” he announces.

“You’re full of shit,” says Lars Madsen.

“Hey—” Junior points at him. “Anyone wearing clothes in the pool is a loser.” He turns, moons everyone, and then does a backflip into the water. Everybody screams as he splashes them. More drunk football players start pulling off their clothes, from both Minnechaug and Colchis. They get up on the diving board, pose, and dive. Bodies start to fall. The pool fills up with naked guys, and they start playing water polo, using a pair of balled-up blue jeans.

Then Grimshaw breaks out of the crowd, in her wedding dress, still holding the bottle of vodka upside down. She approaches the water and stands there on her toes. All action stops.

“No clothes,” Junior orders from the shallow end of the pool. “If the boys do it, you have to do it.”

“I don’t care,” Grimshaw says. “I’ll do it.”

“Well, come on in, then,” he says. “Do it. The water’s fine.”

She walks down the perimeter of the pool to the deep end. Junior follows her with his eyes. She gets up on the diving board, picks through the piles of clothes, kicks some into the water, and waits there for a minute. Her shoes are off, and she stands on her toes, holding the hem of her dress up with her left hand while using the vodka bottle in her right for balance. The music stops. From the other end of the farm, we can hear the Mizeraks’ dogs barking. A cow moos.

“Well, are you gonna take it off, or aren’t you?” the Minnechaug quarterback calls.

“Don’t rush her,” says Junior. “She’ll do it. Then all the girls are gonna do it.”

“I’ll do it,” says Grimshaw. “But we need some music.”

“Mu-SIC!” bellows Junior at the house.

“You don’t own this place.” Angel appears at the edge of the pool, wagging a talon in his face. “You want some music, get your ass out of the pool and get it yourself.”

“OW!” Junior yells. He covers his crotch underwater with both hands.

At that moment, Mike Lyle appears on the patio behind Grimshaw.