“Okay, honey, this is it. Like I said, no cooking in the rooms; the wiring won’t stand it. No smoking in the rooms either. No loud radios or TVs. None of that kind of stuff. You can help yourself to breakfast anytime between seven A.M. and noon. You’ll find the kitchen easy enough—it’s at the end of the hall downstairs. Try not to hog the bathroom in the morning—guys gotta shave before they go to work. Here’s a key to the front door—you go and lose it, you pay to put in a new lock.”

I nodded solemnly and made an ostentatious show of tying it to one of my belt loops. She had put up quite a fight about letting me have a key. When I told her the choice was between that and my rousing her in the middle of the night, she started to demand that I stay elsewhere. In mid-fight she’d broken off and glared at me, then abruptly agreed to the key. It was the third time she’d voluntarily overridden a major objection to my presence. I was here against both our better judgments—that certainly gave us a common ground for conversation.

She turned on the naked forty-watt bulb with obvious reluctance. To save money on electricity she moved as much as possible in the dark. She hovered in the doorway, eyeing my suitcase, which had a number lock.

“You want me to tell you the combination?” I asked brightly. “Or would you like to figure it out for yourself?”

At that she muttered darkly and heaved her bulk out of the entrance. When I heard her slow tread back down the stairs, I undid the lock and surveyed the contents. Except for refill cartridges for my gun there was nothing in there she couldn’t see, nothing that revealed my address or my income. My change of underwear was sober white cotton, not my prized silks. I’d also brought a can of bathroom cleanser and a rag so I could scrub down the sink enough to stand to brush my teeth in it. Let her make of that what she would.

I scooped up the cartridges and stuffed them in my jacket pockets. They could stay in the Impala’s glove compartment for the time being. Whipping the rank sheets from the thin mattress, I stuffed them under the bed and put my own on in their place. It seemed faintly amusing to me that someone of my slovenly habits should have invested so much energy lately in cleaning other women’s houses.

The room sported an ancient plywood bureau lined with papers that dated to 1966. Fascinated, I read part of an article on Martin Luther King’s speech at Soldier Field. I remembered that speech: I’d been one of the one hundred thousand people who came to hear him.