“Joey,” he said. Walked halfway back to her. “That’s a odd name for a girl”.

“Joie,” she said. Then waited and when he waited also she went on. “French for joy. What I was named. I wasn’t ever Joy though. Never brought joy to no one. So, the time came, I changed it to Joey. It suited me.”

“Joy,” he said.

“No.” Emphatic. Even, he thought, a flair of distress. “You can forget I told you that.”

“Sure,” he said. “Joey. I kind of like it.”

“I wasn’t concerned you liked it or not. It’s my name is all.”

“Sure,” he said again. Then felt clear it was time to leave. This would happen over and again in his life and he always heeded it; this still did not explain the times the warning failed to occur. He grinned now at the girl and said, “I gotta go. I’ll see you around, Joey.”

“Maybe,” she said. “You never know.” Then she grinned back. “Be careful around those guineas. They’ll do you worse than pitch you on your butt in the street, you don’t pay attention.”

Now he stopped smiling. “Where’d you hear that?”

“It’s a little town. You might not think so but it is.” She paused and studied his anger and added, “Don’t get worked up. Everybody gets some story or another told about themselves. Now you got one, you watch out for yourself, you won’t need another. See what I mean?”

He was quiet a long moment, then nodded. And looked her over, more bold than before. And she met his eyes with her own and then looked away and he said, his voice tuned down a pitch, “You could use a new umbrella.”

She took it down before her and looked at it. Then propped it back over her shoulder. “Sure I could. I could use plenty of new stuff. Show me someone who couldn’t. Show me one person in this town who doesn’t need and want.”

“Oh,” he said, “I guess there’s ones pretty well satisfied.”

“Don’t you think it. There’s no fools so well off they still don’t want and want. Want theirselves to death. Some new trinket, some new toy.”

“Maybe I was wrong,” he said. “Maybe you’re smarter than I thought.”

She said, “Don’t you forget it.”

It was the middle of the afternoon. Some few high mare’s tails had broken and spread to haze the sky and the air was swampy. The storefront restaurant’s paper shades were up with the windowglass fogged with grease. Inside the front room was empty but for a girl with deep wide dark eyes sitting at one of the tables drawing with a pencil stub on butcher paper. He seated himself at the same table he’d eaten at the day before and waited. The owner came from the back, dressed now in shirtsleeves and a stained high apron tied just under his arms. His face did not change expression upon coming through the half door.