Dishes washed and put away. Everything reliable as the newly-wed suite in the Holiday Inn.

My own house represents other aims, with its comfortable, overstuffed entities, full magazine racks, faded orientals, creaky sills and the general residue of mid-life eclecticism—artifacts of a prior life and goals (many unmet), yet evidence that does not announce a life’s real quality any more eloquently than a new Barca Lounger or a Kitchen Magician, no matter what you’ve heard. In fact, I have become a committed no-muss, no-fuss fellow. And the idea appeals to me of starting life over in such a new and genial place with an instant infusion of colorful, fresh and impersonal furnishings. I might’ve done the same if it hadn’t been for Paul and Clarissa, and if I hadn’t believed I wasn’t so much starting a new life as raising the ante on an old one. And if I hadn’t felt our house was still a sound investment. All of which has worked out well, and most nights I drift off to sleep (wherever I am—a St. Louis, an Atlanta, a Milwaukee or even a Pheasant Meadow) convinced I have come away, as they say, with the best of both worlds—the very thing we all crave.

      Vicki has dowsed her cigarette and begun pinching at her sausage curls in the visor mirror. “Doesn’t it seem strange to you we’d be takin a trip together?” She squinches up her nose, first at her own face then at mine, as if she didn’t expect to hear a word she could believe.

“This is what grownups do—go on trips together, stay in hotels, have wonderful times.”

“Rilly?”

“Really.”

“Well. I guess.” She takes a bobby pin out of her blouse cuff and puts it in her mouth. “It just never seemed like anything I’d be doin. Everett and me went to Galveston sometimes. I been to Mexico, but just to cross over.” She removes the pin and buries it deep in her black hair. “What are you, anyway, by the way?”

“I’m a sportswriter.”

“Yes, I know that. I read things you wrote.” (This is news to me! What things?) “I mean, are you Libra or the Twins. You said your birthday wasn’t but less than a month from now. I want to figure you out.”

“I’m the Taurus.”

“What does that one mean?” She watches me keenly now out the side of her eye while she finishes with her hair.

“I’m pretty intelligent. I’m not cynical, but I’m intuitive about people, and that might make me seem cynical.” All this comes straight from Mrs. Miller, my palmist. It is part of her service to give information like this if I ask her for it, in addition to speculating on the future. I try to see her at least every two weeks. “I’m also pretty generous.”

“I’ll admit that, at least you been that with me. I wonder if that stuff’ll make your dreams come true. I don’t know much about it. I guess I could learn more.”

“What dreams of yours have come true?”

She folds her arms under her breasts like a high school girlfriend and stares straight ahead for miles. It is possible to think of her as being sixteen and chaste instead of thirty and divorced; as never having witnessed a single bad or unhappy thing, despite the fact she attends death and mayhem nearly every day. “Well, look,” she says, staring up the Turnpike. “Did you know I always wanted to go to Detroit?” She pronounces Detroit so as to rhyme with knee-joint.

“No.”

“Well then all right.