Angie was right about the pawnshops and I was right about the strip malls. There was at least one of each per block. And then there were bars with cleverly subtle names like Hooters and Melons and Cheeks broken up by fast-food drive-through places and even drive-through liquor stores for the drunk on the go. Pocking the landscape within all this were several trailer parks and trailer park dealerships and more used car lots than I’d ever seen on the Lynnway Automile.

Angie tugged at her waist. “Jesus, these jeans are hot.”

“Take ’em off then.”

She reached over and turned on the air conditioning, hit the switch on the console between our seats and the power windows rolled up.

“How’s that?” she said.

“I still like my suggestion better.”

“You don’t like the Stealth?” Eddie, the rental agent, seemed confused. “Everyone likes the Stealth.”

“I’m sure they do,” Angie said. “But we’re looking for something a little less conspicuous.”

“Wow,” Eddie said as another rental agent came in off the lot through the sliding glass doors behind him. “Hey, Don, they don’t like the Stealth.”

Don screwed up his sunburned face and looked at us like we’d just beamed down from Jupiter. “Don’t like the Stealth? Everyone likes the Stealth.”

“So we’ve heard,” I said. “But it doesn’t quite fit our purposes.”

“Well what y’all looking for—an Edsel?” Don said.

Eddie loved that one. He slapped his hand on the counter and he and Don made noises I can only describe as hee-hawing.

“What we all are looking for,” Angie said, “is something like that green Celica you have in the parking lot.”

“The convertible?” Eddie said.

“Sure ’nuff,” Angie said.

We took the car as is, even though it needed a wash and gas. We told Don and Eddie we were in a rush, and they seemed even more confused by that than our desire to trade in the Stealth.

“A rush?” Don said, as he checked our driver’s license information against that on the original rental agreement Mr. Cushing had filled out.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s when you have places to go in a hurry.”

Surprisingly, he didn’t ask me what “hurry” meant. He just shrugged and tossed me the keys.

We stopped at a restaurant called the Crab Shack to pore over the map and figure out a plan.

“This shrimp is unbelievable,” Angie said.

“So’s this crab,” I said. “Try some.”

“Trade.”

We did, and her shrimp was indeed succulent.

“And cheap,” Angie said.

The place was literally a shack of clapboard and old piling wood, the tables pocked and scarred, the food served on paper plates, our plastic pitcher of beer poured into waxed paper cups. But the food, better than most seafood I’d ever had in Boston, cost about a fourth of what I was used to paying.