He lifted a finger toward the wall over the filing cabinet, where a latch-hook rug of a pelican on a pylon bulged out from a wooden frame.

“That one’s ugly,” Karen said, taking a book of matches from a basket at the end of the counter.

The man’s eyes were moving across her. She saw him spot the cigarette behind her ear. “You think so? Do me something better, I’ll hang it right there.” He pointed toward the wall next to the pelican.

“I don’t paint,” she said. “And I don’t ‘hook,’ in case you were about to make that dumb joke.”

He squinted at her from behind his glasses. “Let me ask you something,” he said. “Why are you in here talking to me?”

“Because my father told me not to. Why are you talking to me?”

His face locked up in its moronic gaze. Sparking suddenly, he grinned and said, “Any port in a storm, honey.”

She saw his wide brown shoe lift over the laundry basket and land on the grassy carpet between them; then his other shoe appeared and moved farther, planting itself equidistant between her and the basket. He was literally growing before her eyes.

“I’ve got lemonade,” he said. “And Little Debbies.”

She fled the lobby, hurting her wrist when her purse snagged on the door. She ran halfway down the cement walk, and when she finally stopped and looked back, there was no sign of him. Her heart was pounding. As she made her way toward the room, she took the cigarette from behind her ear and placed it between her lips.

Anyone might see her with this cigarette. One of her brothers might step outside, or her mother, and look her way, and the day might take a whole new shape. Mostly, she imagined her father in the station wagon rounding the corner she’d just traversed on foot. Spotting her. Parking and getting out of the car to confront her, or stopping right next to her and rolling down his window. Just what do you think you’re doing?

If a car doesn’t appear in the next ten seconds, she thought, I’ll die in a plane crash.

She walked, and counted.

If a car doesn’t come around the corner in the next ten seconds, the Nazis will kill my family.

She kept walking, and counted to ten again, and without looking back she dug the stolen matches out of her purse and lit the cigarette. She stood across the parking lot from the door to their room, counting for the third time. At last she heard an engine, heard tires moving over gravel and leaves and twigs, and she turned around, planted her feet apart on the asphalt, and drew on the foul-tasting cigarette.

The station wagon rounded the corner.