What struck me as curious was that Daisy had described her father as close to a deadbeat, so I couldn’t understand why he’d continued paying for the car. How perverse to have to go on forking out the dough for a vehicle your wife may or may not have used in running off with another man. Since there was no way the dealer could repossess the car, Foley was stuck. I couldn’t understand why he cared, one way or the other, whether the dealer sued him for the balance or turned him over to a collection agency. Big deal. His credit was already shot, so what was one more debt? I put the question in a drawer at the back of my mind, hoping an answer would be sitting there the next time I looked.

At 5:00 P.M. I locked the office and went home. My studio apartment is located on a side street a block from the beach. My landlord, Henry, had converted the space from a single-car garage to a rental unit, attached to his own house by a glass-enclosed breezeway. I’ve been living there quite happily for the past seven years. Henry’s the only man I know whom I’d be willing to marry if (and only if) we weren’t separated by a fifty-year age difference. It’s tough when the perfect man in your life is an octogenarian… though a young eighty-seven years old. Henry’s trim, handsome, smart, white-haired, blue-eyed, and active. I can go on in this manner, reciting his many virtues, but you probably get the point.

I parked and passed through the squeaky gate that announces my arrival. I went around to the rear and let myself into my apartment, where I wrestled with my conscience briefly, and then changed into my running clothes and did a three-mile jog along the beach. Home again forty minutes later, I found a message from Cheney Phillips waiting on my machine. He proposed a quick bite of supper and said unless he heard otherwise, he’d meet me at Rosie’s close to 7:00. I showered and got back into my jeans.

“Well, it’s an interesting proposition. I’ll give you that,” Cheney said when I’d laid it out to him. Rosie had taken our order, asking us what we wanted, and then writing down what she’d already decided to serve-an unpronounceable dish that she pointed to on the menu. This turned out to be a beef-and-pork stew with more sour cream than flavor, so we’d spent a few minutes surreptitiously adding salt and enough pepper to make our eyes sting. Rosie’s cooking is usually tasty, so neither of us could figure out what was going on with her. Cheney was drinking beer and I was drinking bad white wine, which is all she serves.

“You know what’s hanging me up?” I asked.

“Tell.”

“The thought of failing.”

“There are worse things.”

“Name one.”