Smallwood pulls into a white enamel drive-in called The Squatter, and asks if I want a sinker. I am full to the gills from breakfast, but while he is inside I step out and give a call back to the Pontchartrain. I have briefly won back some enthusiam for the day—the buzzing in my stomach having subsided—and I want to share it all with Vicki, since there is no telling what new world and circumstances she has waked to, given the night’s shenanigans and the strange, whitened landscape confronting her in the daylight.

“I was just lay in here watching the television,” she says in a bright voice. “Just like you said for me to do in your cute note. I already ordered up a Virgin Mary and a honey pull-apart. There’s nothing on TV yet, though. A movie’s next, supposedly.”

“I’m sorry about last night,” I say softly, my voice taking a sudden decibel dive, so that I can barely make it out myself in the traffic noise on Grand River.

“What happened last night, lessee?” I can hear the TV and the sound of ice cubes in her Virgin Mary tinking against the glass. It is a reassuring sound, and I wish I could be there to snuggle up under the warm covers with her and wait for the movie.

“I wasn’t at my best, but I’ll do better,” I say almost soundlessly. I smell warm hash browns, a waffle, an order of French toast humming out of The Squatter’s exhaust fan, and I am suddenly starving.

“This hotel’s a good place to spend your money,” she says, ignoring me completely.

“Well then, go spend some.”

“I’m watching something real cerebral right now,” she says, distracted. “It’s about how the government takes back fifteen tons of old money every week. Mostly just ones. That’s the work-horse bill. A hundred-dollar bill lasts for years, though it dudn’t in my pocket, I’ll tell you that. They are trying to figure out how to make shingles out of them. But right now all they can make is note pads.”

“Are you having a swell time?”

“So far.” She laughs a happy girlish laugh. I see Mr. Smallwood come rolling out the front of The Squatter, a small white paper bag in one huge hand and a sinker half in his mouth. The snow has already begun to melt to slush in the curb gutters.

“I love you, okay,” I say, and suddenly feel terribly feeble. My heart pounds down on itself like an anvil, and I have that old ague-sense that my next breath will bring down a curtain of bright red over my eyes, and I will slump to the phone booth glass and cease altogether. “I love you,” I hear myself murmur again.

“It’s okay with me. But you’re a nut, I’ll tell you that.” She is gay now. “A real Brazil nut. But I like you. Is that all you called up here to say?”

“You just wait’ll I get back,” I say, “I’ll….” But for some reason I do not finish the sentence.

“Do you miss your wife?” she says as gay as can be.

“Are you crazy?” It is clear she has not gotten my point.

“Oh boy. You’re some kind of something,” she says. I hear silverware clink against plates, the sound of the receiver getting far away from her. “Now you hurry back and let me go and watch this.” Clickety-click.

      Ten minutes later we are into the rolling landscape of snowy farmettes and wide cottage-bound lakes beyond the perimeter of true Detroit suburbia, the white-flight areas stretching clear to Lansing. It is here that Mr. Smallwood suggests we turn off the meter and arrange a flat rate, which, when I agree, starts him whistling and suggesting he could hang around till I’m ready to go back.