“Seized up,” is the mechanic’s verdict. He asks Jill, “When’d you last put oil in it?”

“Oil? Don’t they do it when they put the gas in?”

“Not unless you ask.”

“You dumb mutt,” Rabbit says to Jill.

Her mouth goes prim and defiant. “Skeeter’s been driving the car too.”

Skeeter, while the mechanic was poking around in the engine and pumping the gas pedal, uncurled from behind the seats and straightened in the air, his glasses orange discs in the last of the sun. Rabbit asks him, “How far’ve you been taking this crate?”

“Oh,” the black man says, fastidious in earshot of the mechanic, “here and there. Never recklessly. I wasn’t aware,” he minces on, “the automobile was your property.”

“It’s just,” he says lamely, “the waste. The carelessness.”

Jill asks the mechanic, “Can you fix it in an hour? My little brother here has homework to do.”

The mechanic speaks only to Rabbit. “The enchine’s destroyed. The pistons have fused to the cylinders. The nearest place to fix a car like this is probably Pottstown.”

“Can we leave it with you until we arrange to have somebody come for it?”

“I’ll have to charge a dollar a day for the parking.”

“Sure. Swell.”

“And that’ll be twenty for the towing.”

He pays. The mechanic tows the Porsche back to the garage. They ride with him, Jill and Harry in the cab (“Careful now,” the mechanic says as Jill slides over, “I don’t want to get grease on that nice white dress”), Skeeter and Nelson in the little car, dragged backwards at a slant. At the garage, the mechanic phones for a cab to take them into West Brewer. Skeeter disappears behind a smudged door and flushes the toilet repeatedly. Nelson settles to watching the mechanic unhitch the car and listens to him talk about “enchines.” Jill and Harry walk outside. Crickets are shrilling in the dark cornfields. A quarter-moon, with one sick eye, scuds above the flying horse sign. The garage’s outer lights are switched off. He notices something white on her slipper. The little flower that fell has stuck there. He stoops and hands it to her. She kisses it to thank him, then, silently lays it to rest in a trash barrel full of oil-wiped paper towels and punctured cans. “Don’t get your dress greasy.” Car tires crackle; an ancient fifties Buick, with those tailfins patterned on B-19s, pulls into their orbit. The taxi driver is fat and chews gum. On the way back to Brewer, his head bulks as a pyramid against the oncoming headlights, motionless but for the rhythm of chewing. Skeeter sits beside him. “Beautiful day,” Rabbit calls forward to him.

Jill giggles. Nelson is asleep on her lap. She toys with his hair, winding it around her silent fingers.

“Fair for this time of the year,” is the slow answer.

“Beautiful country up here. We hardly ever get north of the city. We were driving around sightseeing.”

“Not too many sights to see.”