I turned the key in the ignition, punched the drive button, backed the car out of the parking space, and swung around just as the engine lurched several times and died.

MIMI WAS RIGHT. Sex was the better option. Fifty American dollars had just been a ploy.

“You know what,” says Mimi, who is more awake than she should be. “I’m hungry.”

“Sleep first,” I say. “Then we eat.”

“I’m hungry now.”

“I think I’m still sick.”

As Mimi sits up, the sheet falls away from her breasts. Even in my diminished condition, they are lovely to look at.

“Are you listening to me or looking at my boobs?”

“Both.”

“So, you’re not that sick.”

“I’m definitely weak.”

Mimi bounces out of bed. “Maybe I’ll go out and get you some white rice. Maybe I’ll be knocked down by some handsome stranger, and he’ll have to help me back to the hotel.”

“Maybe he’ll have a badge.”

“Like this one,” says Mimi, and she holds up Nigel’s little masterpiece.

“What are you going to do with it?”

“The bundle,” says Mimi. “Maybe this will be the contribution from Prague.”

I TRIED STARTING the car again. The battery was charged. The starter motor was turning over. But the engine wouldn’t catch. And that’s when I saw it. The gas gauge. It was still set on full.

And then I remembered. The note on the pad next to the keys. “Gauge.”

Shit.

The attendant at the gas station was a young kid about my age. I tried to be nonchalant.

“Sometimes the gauge doesn’t work,” I told him. “I think I’m out of gas.”

“Nice car.”

“It’s a beauty, all right.”

“You want me to help you push it?”

I couldn’t think of anything else to do, so I said sure, and we started pushing the car the hundred feet or so from the café to the pumps. The Fury drove like a dream, but pushing it was like trying to shove a boulder up a down escalator.

“Fill it up?”

“How many gallons will a dollar buy me?”

“A dollar?” The kid gave me a cockeyed smile. “Gas is forty-one cents a gallon, so you’d get about two gallons.”

“It’s thirty-one cents in the valley.”

“We’re not in the valley.”

I started to do the math in my head. “You know how many miles to the gallon this car gets?”

“You don’t know?”

“It’s my father’s car. He lets me use it.”

“Cool,” said the kid. “Pop the hood, and we’ll take a look.”

Which was more easily said than done. I had never opened the hood of a 1960 Plymouth Fury. So I hung back and let the kid take the lead.

“Your dad’s got good taste.”

“That’s Dad.”

“This is the 361 Sonoramic. Two Carter four barrels, 310 horses, 435 cubic inches of torque.”

“Lot of power.”