“Don’t come to the bank.” There was a pause, as if she had to think through the variables and find the best one. “Come to the house, say at seven-thirty. We’ll be finished with dinner then and Toby will be doing his homework. Is that all right?”

“Fine.”

There was another pause and then she said, “Thank you for trying.”

“Don’t mention it.”

I put down the phone and looked at Pike. “We’ll go out to her place at seven-thirty.”

Pike nodded, then went out to the lobby and checked in, taking one of the rooms adjoining mine. I stood in the door and watched him bring in an olive-green Marine Corps duffel bag and a long metal gun case that looked like something for a Vox guitar. Anyone saw it, they’d think Pike played bass for Lou Reed. After he was settled he came back into my room and we looked at each other. It was four-forty-five. He said, “Anything around here to do until seven?”

“Nope.”

“Any good places to eat?”

I shook my head.

Pike looked out of my window down onto the parking lot and crossed his arms. “Well,” he said. “We didn’t have it this good in Southeast Asia.”

Nothing like support from your friends.

At five o’clock we went down to the bar and drank beer, then enjoyed an early dinner in the restaurant. I had a very nice chicken-fried steak. Pike had lentil soup and a large mixed vegetable salad and four slices of whole-wheat toast and a thick wedge of Jarlsberg cheese. Vegetarian.

The female bartender who was thinking about moving to California came in from the bar and kidded around with us until two older couples in heavy coats and loud shirts walked in and then she had to go back to the bar. The two older couples didn’t eat. They just drank.

After a while we bought four beers to go and took them back to my room and watched the local New York news. The weather forecast said that the skies would continue to clear for the next few days, but that then another front would move down from Canada bringing cold and snow. The sports report was fine, but the hard news stories were mostly about subways and city strikes and local personalities and things indigenous to New York. They seemed alien and sort of empty.