“ … but it was different from this one. And the river wasn’t the Detroit River but was meant to be the Niagara River. The fear on the boat was, we would be sucked by the current and plunge over the Falls.”

Thoughtfully the man tells L.K. this dream fragment as if it could be a matter of importance to her. She wonders at his audacity, his vanity. The vanity of the self-satisfied male! Or is it simply that this man wants to interest her and is saying something he thinks will intrigue her.

Oddly, L.K. is intrigued. She has been fascinated by his thick lips, his big, blunt, stained teeth, something piratical about his manner, his swagger. The way he strokes his unshaven jaws as a man might stroke a beard.

She laughs. He sees that he is entertaining her. He will like her better, he will admire her more, if he believes that he is entertaining her.

“Are you a visitor here? You don’t look like you live here …”

“Yes. A visitor.”

She expects him to ask why she is visiting, whom she is visiting, but instead he asks if she has seen the Eastern Market murals—painted by Detroit artists.

She tells him no, she doesn’t think so. She’d been aware of colorful murals she’d seen the previous day on the walls of abandoned buildings, but she hadn’t known what they were.

“Well. These are more than colorful. If I had my vehicle with me, we could …”

Vehicle. Odd choice of a word. There is a formality to the smiling man’s speech, somewhat at odds with the genial slovenliness of his appearance, that intrigues her.

And he has said we could …

How casually he has introduced we into his conversation. L.K. hears but does not reply.

At last he tells her what he has seemed to be preparing to tell her: his studio is in the Durant building.

A neutral statement—His studio in the Durant building. Not an invitation exactly.

“D’you know where that is—the Durant?”

“I think so. The name is familiar. Yes.”

She isn’t sure. A center for young and emerging artists in a rundown section of Detroit, near the waterfront … But she is pleased that her companion is an artist of some sort. Flattering to L.K., she’d sized him up almost at once.

A sort of Ai Weiwei, she thinks. Physically big, with a big head, large, expressive features.

Such a man, sexually rapacious. A bull of a man. His weight on a woman would be crushing. L.K.’s breath is quickened.

He tells her that his studio is a fifteen-minute walk from where they are standing. Tells her that he hikes over to Belle Isle most afternoons to alleviate stress. Flexing his stubby fingers as if they pain him.