The trees were as green and as fat as artichokes, so the first clue I was getting close came when I entered a sharp curve and a diamond-shaped sign leapt out of the bushes reading HIDDEN DRIVEWAY. The two-lane blacktop is a crazy serpentine scenic highway following the bank of a tributary of Lake Huron, a trade route for all the tribes and traders in the old Northwest Territory. LaSalle, Cadillac, and Pontiac had navigated it, long before their names were etched in chrome. When I downshifted for the turn, I couldn’t be sure if the canoe I thought I spotted was there or if it was paddled by ghosts. I pushed my old Cutlass up a twisting stretch of black composition flanked by cedars hanging on by their teeth. At length it flattened out and drew a loop in front of a big Tudor with three sharp gables sticking up like the points of a display handkerchief. There was a four-car garage attached and a satellite dish on either end of the roof. Offhand it looked like Dante could have blown off that fifteen g’s like a white chip, but any lifestyle is possible in the age of the thirty-year fixed mortgage; for a while, anyway.
