They ignored him and trudged on, ragged and out of step. He stole a look at one smarting hand, found blisters already broken on the palm, droplets of blood beginning to form. He swapped hands, peered at his right, it was bleeding as well.

He awoke and above the window rode a high remote moon, pale light that fell oblique and frangible upon his palms, the shadows of the bars running horizontal and vertical and infinite, latticing the sleeping old man where he lay. Before he was awake and at himself Edgewater had already examined his hands, but they were healed, it had all been long ago.

It was ten the next morning before she got him out, they came out of the City Hall in Leighton and down the steps into the sunlight. People going in and out of the courthouse glanced at him with interest, with no envy. She had on her sunglasses, seeking anonymity perhaps, a respectable woman bailing miscreants out of the drunk tank, followed by this curious hatless sailor lost so far inland. She was not happy. The Crown Victoria waited at a parking meter and he got in and closed the door. It was a while before Claire followed. She stood by the car peering in at him, studying him as if he was something malignant, bad news on a glass slide. Finally she got in. Her jaws were tightened and muscles worked there and she clutched the purse as if it were some weapon she might fall upon him with.

But the sun was warm and Edgewater closed his eyes and turned his bruised face to it and just absorbed that and the heat from the hot plastic behind his head.

He could hear her fumbling out the keys. The engine cranked and they were in motion. She squalled the tires savagely, spun smoking into the street, not looking at him. They rode for a time in silence. He lowered his hand, watched her clean profile against the shifting pattern of traffic, pedestrians moiling like ants. He studied her intently, as if he had never seen her before, some unwary stranger who had lowered her guard and permitted him trespass to her very soul. He saw for the first time the faint cobwebbing of lines fanning out from the corners of her eyes, the grainy skin magnified by the merciless sun. He looked past her eyes into her and found there imperfections as well. Cold vapors swirling off the River Styx. We grow old, we grow old.

She did not speak all the way to his motel. The Starlight Motorcourt, the sign corrected. Edgewater had no motor but he’d had four dollars a night, they let him stay anyway.

He went in and showered and shaved and brushed his teeth. He put on a clean T-shirt and a pair of khakis and peered out the window. She was still parked outside, waiting. You’ve got to have your say, he said. He took the blade out of the razor and put the razor and toothbrush and a sliver of soap into his pocket. He put on a longsleeve shirt and looked about the room to see what of him remained: a dropped paperback by the bed, a couple of magazines. The room seemed to be fading, losing its reality, a poorly executed backdrop for whatever had transpired here. He looked out the window then sat in a chair by the sill and watched her blonde head beyond the neat green lawn.

When he came up to the car she had her eyes closed, the glasses made them dark and enigmatic.