He shrugged. “We got what we came for. We could leave, rent a car from someone else, take a bus. We could go home.”

“Let’s stay,” I said. The room was paid for, Froehmer was taken care of, and I didn’t really want to get back in a car. I was still shaken. It wasn’t bothering Frank. The guy who’d lost a day worried about a dead horse wasn’t worried now at all. For him the job was done.

“Let’s go get something to eat,” Frank said.

We walked around until we found something that looked all right. “If Froehmer’s got a problem,” Frank said. “Tell him it was my fault.”

“A guy hit us. That’s not your fault. I never saw the driver, who was it?”

“Teenager,” Frank said. “On the phone.”

“Cops?”

“They were more interested in him than me.”

“The driver didn’t say anything about me?”

“Nothing. Probably never saw you. He wasn’t real sure what had happened, but he told the cops right away that he was on the phone. Once he said that I could have driven off in the squad car for all the attention they gave me.”

“Lucky for us, I guess,” I said.

“I saw him, though,” Frank said.

“I know. I felt you hit the gas.”

“I didn’t see him soon enough.” That bothered him. “That’s my fault,” Frank said.

“Fifty-fifty, like always.”

Frank took a look at his watch. “We could still leave tonight,” he said.

“It’s fine,” I said. “We’ll go first thing tomorrow.”

When we got back to the hotel room Frank read a book he’d brought along. I stared into my phone at some game before I picked up one of Frank’s books. I don’t remember what it was or what it was about. I was thinking about something my father had told me when he was in the hospital.

“In the end,” he said, “People don’t really care about how it turned out for you. I mean, some people might be happy, and some other people might be mad, or jealous, or whatever. But in the end, they don’t really care one way or the other. They only care about themselves. So if they don’t care, if it doesn’t really matter, why play by the rules? If they don’t care, why should we?”