“Oh, maybe a little,” Colin answered dryly.

“I’ll get it for you right away, then. And I’ll keep the coffee coming.” The waitress bustled off.

Caffeinated, his stomach greased against the slings and arrows of outrageous single malts, Colin drove out of Jackson: past the park with the elk-antler arches at each corner, past the visitors’ center, and north out into open country. Yellowstone was still more than fifty miles away, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t fighting traffic, the way he would be on the Harbor Freeway or the 405. A lot of the time, his little Ford seemed to be the only car on the road. Things here would get more crowded later in the season, but they hadn’t yet. No one even checked his receipt when he came to Grand Teton National Park-the ranger station at the southern entrance was closed and empty.

Off to his left towered the Grand Tetons themselves. One of his guidebooks said that was French fr Big Tits. The sharp, jagged, snow-topped mountains didn’t make him think of boobs. They reminded him of a cat’s back teeth, made for shearing meat into swallowable chunks. Whose cat’s back teeth? Maybe God’s.

Even the guidebook allowed that only a very lonely French trapper could have imagined those mountains were breastlike. Colin wasn’t so sure the book had it straight there. How about a French trapper whose wife had run off with an aerobics instructor? That sounded just about right to him.

Clouds rolled in. They were lower than the Tetons, and blocked them from view. Pretty soon, rain started spattering down. Rain in June seemed perverse to someone from L.A., but Colin could deal with it. Besides, it would stop pretty soon, and then start up again whenever it felt the urge. He’d seen that on his drive up the day before-and on the drive down, and while he was in Yellowstone. Erratic weather was the price you paid for beating the crowds.