It’s safe. I take the wife now and then. You can drink some wine, have a good time.” For some reason Mr. Smallwood has started talking like a second generation Swede, and I understand he isn’t making fun of me at all, only trying to be a good ambassador for his city, putting on the voice he has learned for it.

“That’s great,” I say, not quite hearing all this insider’s dining advice, turning an ear instead into the windy sibilance of the city air. Snow flakes are falling now.

“Come on back when the weather’s nicer,” he says. “You’ll like it a whole lot better.”

“When will that be?” I smile, giving him the old Michigan straight line.

“Ten minutes maybe.” He cracks a big wisecracker’s grin, the same as his hundred-dollar-whore grin. And with the slap-shut of the yellow door, he shoots off down the street, leaving me at the hissing curbside as solitary as a lonely end.

      Though not for long.

Back in the room, the TV is on without sound. The drapery is drawn and two trays of dishes are set outside. Vicki lies naked as a jaybird on the rumpled bed, drinking a 7-Up and reading the in flight magazine. Air in the room is hot and close, changed from the sleep-soft night smell. Only the sad old familiarity from the dreamy days after Ralph died is left: lost in strangerville with a girl I don’t know well enough and can’t figure how to revive an interest in (or, for her sake, an interest in me that would compensate). It is a tinny, minor-key feeling, a far-flung longing for conviction among the convictionless.

“I’m sure glad to set you” she says, giving me a happy smile in the blinky TV light. I stand in the little dark entryway, my two feet heavy as anchors, and I can’t help thinking of my life as a scene in some steamy bus station novel. Big Sledge moved toward the girl cat-quick, trapping her where he’d wanted her, between his cheap drifter’s suitcase and the pile of greasy tire chains against the back of the lube bay. Now she would see what’s what. They both would. “How’d everything work out with your old football guy?”

“Dandy.” I go to the window, pull back the heavy curtain and look out. Snow is dazzling an inch from my face, falling in burly flakes onto Jefferson Avenue. The river is lost in white, as is Cobo. In the street, flashing yellow beacons signal the first snowplows. I feel I can hear their skid and clatter, but I’m sure I do not. “I don’t like the looks of this weather. We might have to change our plans.”

“A-Okay,” she says. “I’m just happy to be here today with you. I can go to the aquarium someplace else. They must be alike.” She sets her 7-Up on her bare belly and stares at it, thinking.

“I wanted this to be a nice vacation for you, though. I had a lot of plans.”

“Well, keep ’em, cause I’ve had a plenty good time. I ordered beer-batter shrimp up here, which was a meal in itself. I put on my clothes and went downstairs and looked in the shops which’re nice, though they’re like Dallas’s in a lot of similar ways.