The Stuarts and their dog burst into the Canadian Shield Outfitters building at 6:30 in the morning, a high-energy power couple, freshly showered and groomed, clad in fine L.L. Bean outdoor clothing, and eager to take on the world.
Mr. Stuart was in his forties, a tall, fleshy man in good shape. He walked with the decisiveness of a commanding general and oozed self-importance. Even if Annette hadn’t read their file, she would have known he was the owner of a large company in the U.S.
Mrs. Stuart was nearly as tall as Annette, athletic, and very toned. A fitness fanatic. She was in her late thirties, maybe even forty, elegantly beautiful in a day-spa kind of way, with highlighted hair, a nice tan, and skin as perfect as a cover girl’s. Annette felt a pang of something like jealousy. Mrs. Stuart looked a lot like the elegant women in the photos of Gabe Pender’s restaurant industry events. There were endless pages of them on the Internet, the events and the glamor people and Pender. So many she wondered why he would have any lingering interest in her.
Mrs. Stuart tried to control the dog, a manic cross between a Labrador and a standard poodle that had not stopped moving since they entered the place. When he caught sight of the animals mounted on the walls, he pranced and bucked for the chance to give chase.
Annette smiled and introduced herself. “I’ve prepared your trip plan, and I’ll be taking you through your gear and your trip plan this morning,” she said. Mrs. Stuart smiled slightly as they shook hands; her husband stared at Annette for a moment before accepting her outstretched hand.
He flushed angrily. “I thought I was dealing with Guy and Dan Gilbert.”
As in man-to-man, executive-to-executive, realized Annette.
“I’ve been running the canoe outfitting business since spring,” said Annette. “Don’t worry, I’ve been guiding in Quetico for twenty-five years. I know your route very well . . .”
As she said it, Stuart’s face flushed again. She started to wonder why, and then she knew. How macho could his Quetico expedition be if a woman had already done it?
“But I took the liberty of consulting with Dan, too, so you get the benefit of a lot of experience.” She made it sound like they didn’t do that for everyone.
“Sure, sure,” said Stuart. “All the same, I’d like to see Guy or Dan. Can you call one of them?”
Annette refused to be offended. “Sorry, Guy is out of town, and Dan is doing a fly-in party right now. He’ll be back around ten, if you want to wait. Otherwise, you’re in good hands. Really.”
“We can’t wait that long. Goddamn it, this is no way to run a business. I have half a mind to just blow the whole thing off. Who’s taking us to French Lake?”
“I’ll be taking you.” Annette focused on the paperwork in her hands. She didn’t need to see the man’s disappointment at the knowledge his conquest of nature was starting with a woman driver.
The dog was panting and straining against its leash. Mrs. Stuart was struggling to hold him in check. Stuart glanced at the dog, then at Annette. “Okay, let’s get going.”
“We have a few things to do here, first,” said Annette. “I want to show you your maps and talk you through the route. Then we need to go through your packs so you know where everything is. I’ll show you how to set up the tent and light the stove.”
“No need,” said Stuart. “I’m sure we can figure it out.”
Annette frowned. The worst complaints Quetico outfitters received came from novices like the Stuarts who thought backpacking in the mountains prepared them for canoe camping in the Canadian Shield.
“I just want to get going,” he said. “We’ve safaried in Africa, backpacked the Rockies, kayaked in Greenland, all that stuff. I know how to pitch a tent and light a stove. We’re good to go.” He gestured impatiently with one hand, a hurry-up motion coming from an important man accustomed to giving orders and having people snap-to immediately.
Annette held her tongue. People like Stuart usually didn’t come to the Quetico side of the border, but this one had something to prove, something the Boundary Waters wasn’t big enough to handle. He wanted to do a long trip, cross Quetico. He came to Canadian Shield Outfitters because of CSO’s fly-in/paddle-out trip. Very macho. The client is flown into a lake on one of Quetico’s borders, then paddles out. Or, in his case, vice versa. He and his wife would be paddling from the northeast corner of Quetico through the heart of the park to the Minnesota border, then east to the southeast corner of Quetico, where a CSO floatplane would air-lift them back to Atikokan.
“Okay,” said Annette. “But we have to do a trip plan review. It’s the law. I can’t put you in the park without making sure you know your route and what to do in an emergency.” It wasn’t Ontario law, but it was her law and that was close enough.
He sighed like an important man having to put up with a petty bureaucrat. “Okay,” he said. “Lexie, take that mutt outside. This’ll just take a minute.”
Annette suggested they both sit in for the trip plan review, but Stuart waved her off. “I take care of this stuff,” he said.
“But if you have an accident—”
“Then we both die.” He cut her off, finished the sentence, and turned his back on her all in one quick moment. Mrs. Stuart left the building in silent strides, her body tense, the dog hopping and circling her, wrapping her in the leash.
“Your charts are in here,” Annette told him, heading for the trip planning room. Stuart ignored her for several long moments, taking time to gaze at the array of stuffed wildlife on the walls of the main room. Making sure she knew who was in charge. When he finally joined her, she started taking him through his route, pointing out landmarks for portages, places to fish for different species, locations of primitive campsites. As she started on the second day, he cut her off again.
“I don’t need this, Miss. I’ve studied these maps already, and I talked to Dan. Lexie and I have read books about this place. We’re ready.”
Annette stared at him for a moment. “If you get ten days of good weather, this might be as easy as you think it’s going to be. But we almost never get ten consecutive days of good weather. Chances are you’re going to get wind and rain some of the time, and things can get very difficult. It’ll just take a few minutes.”
“We’ll be fine.”
Annette shrugged. She packaged their charts in waterproof plastic and loaded them and their gear in a CSO van. Stuart sat in front. His wife settled into the back seat with the dog, trying to control his hyperactive whining and jumping.
“How long have you had the dog?” Annette asked.
“Got him last winter when we decided to do this trip.” The man said it like it was a grand proclamation. “Lexie was worried about the bears. Problem solved. He’ll make enough noise to discourage any bear.”
Annette tried to hide her smile. Quetico’s black bears tended to be shy creatures, keeping their distance from canoe trippers. The worst of them were more nuisances than dangerous, unless you got between a sow and her cub.
“Have you boat-trained the dog?” she asked. A big hyper dog in a trip-laden canoe could be a much bigger danger than bears.
“Yeah. They’re born to it.” The man waved his hand dismissively. “We had him out a couple times, made him sit. He was fine.”
“Did you have him lying on packs?” A seventy-pound dog lying on top of a voyageur pack raised the canoe’s center of gravity substantially. If the dog stood and tried to move around, the results could be catastrophic.
“He’ll be fine.” Stuart smiled.
“Do me a favor,” said Annette. “Make it a point to wear your flotation vests today.”
“We know what we’re doing, Miss.” Stuart looked out the window, away from Annette.
“Humor me. Just for today,” said Annette. “More than a few dog trips start out wet.” Stuart smiled and agreed without a shred of sincerity.
As Annette steered the van through the curves and hills of Highway 11 on her way back to Atikokan, her thoughts returned to Lexie Stuart. She had looked so imperious when she walked in the door—beautiful, rich, and glamorous. Annette had assumed Mrs. Stuart was a powerful woman in her own right, maybe the owner of her own company or the president of someone else’s. Someone used to giving orders. Someone who had an active sex life, maybe with her husband, maybe with someone else.
And yet she obeyed her husband with the silent acquiescence of a housemaid. Annette tried to understand how that could be, but she couldn’t. No one had ever treated her that way, not even Rob. Not even the youthful Pender.
Which got her thinking about the photos on the Menu website, the ones showing Pender posing with famous chefs and restaurateurs, with beautiful talk-show personalities, speaking to large groups of sumptuously dressed power people. He had lived the life of the American ideal. Rich. Well known, if not famous. Connected to the glitterati. He was still an attractive man and probably well off. He could have his pick of countless women, all of them younger and more attractive than her.
What kind of man leaves that behind to spend a month in the wilderness and rendezvous with a grandmother with weather-beaten skin and the wardrobe of a coal miner? The more she thought about it, the more she figured he must not be interested in sex anymore. Maybe the divorce did it. Or just age. It happened. A whole industry had evolved to help mature men get boners at the right time. She snickered at the thought.
Maybe the rendezvous really would be just a picnic and a handshake, two old friends getting caught up. When she told Christy that’s how it would be, that’s what she expected. But in the dark, lonely moments of the Canadian night, she sometimes dreamed that it would be like old times. They’d meet. They’d touch. The electricity would flow again. She’d feel those feelings, like when they were kids in college. As she dreamed it, she felt it, and the sensation was so intense she sometimes had to get up and walk it off, let the chill of the night divert her thoughts back to the here and now, create space from the impossible fantasy. She was a sixty-year-old grandmother, far past the age of torrid sex and steamy love affairs.