From the button-down pocket of her shirt she took the cigarette Judy had given her, flattened now because she’d slept on it, and as she was rolling it back into shape between her thumb and forefinger, she remembered that her father had taken her matches. She stuck the cigarette behind her ear, followed the front of the motel to the glass door of the lobby, and pushed it open.

Behind the desk, with his wide back to her, was the bald-headed man her father had told them all to stay away from.

“Morning,” she said, strolling across the indoor-outdoor carpet.

The man swung around with an exaggerated look of shock on his face, which immediately melted into a fake-looking smile. His skin had the color and sheen of Silly Putty. “Yes, we have rooms.”

“I already have a room.”

“You do?” His glasses had slid down the bridge of his nose, and he tilted his head back to look through them. “You’re a rather young lady to have your own room.”

“We’re in twenty-eight, like you didn’t know.” She pulled the key out of her purse and waved the tag at him.

“That’s right. That’s right, you are. That’s the room we reserve for … frisky people.” He took hold of one side of his glasses and seesawed them into place, and when he gazed at her again, his eyes were magnified. “What can I do you for?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Just killing time till I can get out of this dump.” She ran her eyes across the tourist pamphlets in the metal rack next to the cigarette machine.

“You’ve got better things you could be doing, eh?”

“Than staying here? About a million.”

The man cleared his throat. He leaned his stomach against the counter. “Then why aren’t you doing them?”

She glared at him.

“Just asking,” he said, holding up his palms. “You folks checking out today?”

“I hope so.”

“Where are they? Your folks, I mean.”

“My mother’s in the room, asleep,” Karen said. “My father’s with a friend of his.” She walked past the cigarette machine, running her eyes over a calendar and a map of the state of Florida, to the wall behind the desk. There was a paint-by-numbers picture of a man she guessed was Ponce de Leon, bending down over a fountain with his hand dipped into the water. “You paint that yourself?”

He was staring at her with his lips parted. She’d walked to the back of the lobby and could see behind the counter now, where he was standing next to a low filing cabinet with a laundry basket blocking his feet. “A girl I know did it,” he said.

“Your wife?”

He shook his head, his mouth still hanging open as if he were drying his teeth. “Just a girl. Another girl I know did that one.”