The Last Refuge (45 page)
“Geez, Burt, and here I am buyin’ you a drink.”
“Just asking.”
“Jesus.”
“So you’re in the mood to be sociable.”
“What the hell do you think I’m doing? You know, we
are
sittin’ here talking, for Chrissakes.”
“So I can ask her in. Probably getting cold in the car.”
“You got somebody out in the car? What the hell for?”
I started to stand up, but he waved me down. Eddie jumped up and looked around, on alert.
“I promised her I’d check the temperature in here first. Soften you up.”
I sat back down on the sofa.
“What are you doing, Burt? You know I hate that shit.”
“I know. That’s why I had to talk her into coming. But now that she’s here, try to act like a civil human being. She is your only daughter, after all.”
When he left with Eddie to go out to the car I made a full retreat to the farthest end of the porch, where I had a miserable old oak drop-leaf kitchen table, brass pole lamp and assorted ashtrays. I sat down and looked out at the water. That rise in the cloud cover to the west had already made its way to about twelve o’clock high, opening a band of pale blue sky.
So I sat there and waited, fortified by bourbon on the rocks and the pallid white glare of the winter sun as it lit up the wave tips dashing across the sacred Little Peconic Bay.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
H
EARTFELT THANKS TO
Literary Agent Mary Jack Wald. Thanks to the following for contributions factual, practical and literary: Randy Costello, Cindy Courtney, Nancy Dugan, Sean Cronin, Mary Farrell, Whit Knopf, Anne-Marie Regish and Rich Orr.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
C
HRIS
K
NOPF
is a principal of Mintz & Hoke, a marketing communications agency. A native of Philadelphia, educated in the U.S. and London, Knopf lives with his wife and their two wheaten terriers in Avon, Connecticut and Southampton Village, Long Island.
The Last Refuge
is his first novel.
VINTAGE CANADA EDITION, 2006
Copyright © 2005 Chris Knopf
Published by arrangement with The Permanent Press
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Published in Canada by Vintage Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, in 2006. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by The Permanent Press in 2005. Distributed by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Vintage Canada and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House of Canada Limited.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Knopf, Chris
The last refuge / Chris Knopf.
eISBN: 978-0-307-36975-8
I. Title.
PS3611.N66L37 2006 813′.6 C2006-900138-3
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