The journey home to Michigan takes either two or three days, depending on how they feel. This trip they make in two.

Vinyl didn’t talk to his wife until dinner that first night on the road. Sipping his rob roy before the meal, he watched her looking out on the dining room, seeking any alternative to facing him. With the simple pragmatism that characterizes long marriages—that is, the mutual acceptance of deeply flawed human nature—he felt more than thought how much he still cared for his wife, still liked to look at her and hear her voice. So, he brought up neutral topics—chores waiting for them when they got home. Bedding she always aired, landscaping for him. Always there are lots of leaves to tend to, half rotten after the winter snow and spring rains. Seeing her relief and eagerness to talk, he decided to let it go. Perhaps she’s right, he thought, and ordered another rob roy. Little kids, babies. She could be right.

But late the following afternoon, bumping along the shaded dirt road to their place, dark with leafy hardwood summer foliage, the mister caught himself looking in the rearview for the dog. When they reached their property, he braked to a stop outside the pole barn. He’d had it built when they bought the house, a big shiny shed of corrugated steel to house the riding mower, the cars and boats. They opened the gate and followed the walkway, he used his key. Everything was where it belonged, a big log house smelling of sap. He walked then to the end of the property, to check the guest cabin. The lake looked higher than last year. That would be good for boating. The service had come and put in the dock, rolling it down the grassy slope.

So, in the following days he does his best. He repairs a broken water line in the irrigation system, gets out a ladder and cleans the gutters. His wife comes out to watch, for safety’s sake. He cuts the grass, rolling and swaying in the seat, a ride similar to golf carts. He spreads fertilizer, grills. Life lived without Bill is life as it was before the dog. Workable. The first weekend, a former business partner comes to visit. While the wives go scouring the antique shops and yard sales near Cadillac, the men fish. On the lake they talk about friends who have died, the stock market, notorious clients from the past. The mister doesn’t bring up the dog, glad his friend never came during Bill’s time.

So, life goes on. Persists. But it’s not the same. Against his will one afternoon, sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs on the greensward facing the lake, he understands something modestly profound. He had known it before, but not thought about it. It was the dog’s vitality he most valued and now misses. Just that, his simple, direct, pull-out-the-stops approach to everything. You’re no baby boomer, he thinks, remembering the dog jumping off the diving platform. No all-organic crap or vitamin supplements to help you live to a hundred. Bill was your tonic.

Odd, how his thoughts wander. Sex, for instance. With the new drug (nothing bogus about that, he thinks), the mister still has a token sex life. Notwithstanding the annoyingly coy ads on TV, the stuff does work. As much as anything, though, having sex for both of them these days serves mostly to confirm it’s still possible, that they’re still in the game.

What’s that got to do with Bill? As he almost never does (selling vinyl siding to builders made him well-to-do, not reflective), he sticks with the question. The size of him, for one thing. That was part of it. Bill is a man’s dog. Being able to manage him had been a source of pride. Not that it was ever a problem. Never. The mister shakes his head in confirmation. But if you aren’t really driven any longer by testosterone, what remains—you could say what now represents getting it up—is vitality. Being ready for things. Being ready to say hell yes, let’s do it, whatever “it” might be, whatever you might otherwise have cancelled or begged off on, asking for a rain check.

The dog gave you more of that, he thinks. Whether it’s fair or true he doesn’t know, but this conviction leads Vinyl to a second thought. She was jealous of him, he thinks. Your wife was jealous of a damn dog. Jealous, too, of other women, younger ones, or those with better figures—especially those younger. Glenda Gilmore, for instance. All that fake sympathy for her at the club, when in fact his wife and almost every woman on the property believe Glenda married Cliff just for money. So what? he thinks, not seeing the lake. What if it’s true? Whose business is it?

Still, resenting someone who looks that good, a former model with whom you can’t hope to compete in that way—that, too, is understandable. But a dog? A big old mutt? He believes it, though. That night at dinner he is quiet, eating his pork chops and sweet potato, saying nothing. Good or bad, he always compliments his wife’s cooking. When he fails to, she tries different topics. He answers, but hardly moves his mouth.

She knows what it is, and eats then in silence. But by the end of the meal, she has managed to convince herself he is coming down with something.