The fucking lake shark. The reason he’s here in this backwater town in this shitty landlocked state, no salt water for thousands of miles. A colleague of his in Canada had called him up saying he had been gathering reports of a bull shark that had somehow gotten off course and ended up in the Great Lakes, managing to adapt its saline secretions and reverse the effects of osmosis in order to stay alive. Adam did some research and found bull shark sightings all the way up the Mississippi River and into Lake Michigan, then right up to Duluth, where it appeared weak, likely exhausted, and on the verge of death. He got some footage and sent in a proposal to Discovery Channel for a live shark rescue during Shark Week, and they ate it up like a fat kid at a buffet. It was new, it was mysterious, it was emotional. It was going to make Adam a million dollars.

“Maybe I’ll just call it The Fucking Lake Shark,” he said. “That’s kind of edgy, right? People will love it.”

Yasmine leaned forward so that her unbuttoned shirt fell open and he could see her entire left breast, in all its goddamn beautiful glory. “Well, you know,” she said, “people love anything to do with fucking.”

“Mmm-hmm,” said Adam, sliding his hand under her shirt. But she pushed it away and took another sip of her whisky, glaring at him. Yasmine had turned out to be somewhat unpredictable.

Someone else who is proving to be unpredictable is Lisa. Adam can feel her eyes on him, which is strange because he doesn’t think she has looked at him once in four days. He turns and sees her leaning against the wall by the cash register, watching him and filing her nails, which he’s pretty sure has got to be a health violation.

“What’s your deal, anyway?” she asks, blowing on the tip of her nail.

“My deal?”

Her tongue darts out and licks the edge of the file. “Where are you from?”

“Why are you suddenly so interested?”

“I don’t know.” She moves on to her thumbnail with the wet file. “I’m bored.”

“No offence,” Adam says, cringing at the sound of the file against her nail, “but it seems like you’re always bored.”

She shrugs. “It’s Duluth. I mean, you’re here, you know.” She tucks the file away in her apron, then leans in towards him. Her face is very close to his; he can smell the cinnamon gum on her breath. “Why don’t you buy me a drink and we can talk about it?”

“Oh, I get it. Now you want something.”