She’d almost forgotten how desperate she’d been to see Mitch again; she used to check with Ola and Biata every single day to see if he’d called, but lately she hadn’t even had a fleeting thought about him. He made her feel nervous, as though she needed to meet his standards.

“You came all this way just to see me?”

“Yeah, sure I did. All the way from California.” His glasses refracted the sun into explosions of russet light. “It was a convenient excuse to buy a car.”

“A new one? What kind?”

“An Excalibur. Just picked her up. She’s a beauty.”

Sherri tried to sound impressed. She remembered the Excalibur from the car show she’d worked with Val her second month on the job. Janesville was the sister town to Beloit and home of the massive GM plant. Val, like everyone from that corner of the state, knew all about cars. Val thumbed her nose at the showy, low-slung antique-looking roadsters that were manufactured in Milwaukee. “They design them to look like the pre–World War Two Mercedes,” Val said between forced smiles. Excaliburs belonged in a black-and-white mobster movie from the thirties, outfitted with features she was paid to point at as the MC narrated the car’s benefits: luggage racks, chrome wire tires, and exhaust pipes like rib cages. It was the kind of car a mayor would drive in a parade. Occasionally, Sherri would see one parked in front of the resort. The valets didn’t bother moving them to the lot—showy cars like that they kept near the entrance, like the stretch Rolls-Royce the musicians used.

“Those cars are classy,” Sherri had said.

Val had rolled her eyes. “They’re stupid fiberglass kit cars built on a Pinto chassis. Piss elegance. Phyllis Diller drives them.”

“Piss elegance” was the term that jumped into her mind that morning while she spoke to Mitch. “What about the Ferrari?” Sherri asked. “Isn’t that a new car?”

“Who says I can’t have more than one?”

“Nobody, silly. Drive a whole fleet if it makes you happy.” Sherri tried to sound bright, but she could hardly open her eyes. Why did he have to show up on the day she was trying to come clean? “I bought a car, too.” She thought she sounded very established. “A Monte Carlo.”

“Why not a sports car?” Mitch looked around, unimpressed. “Hey, want to get out of here?” He pulled a crushed pack of Camels from his pocket, lit one with a shiny gold lighter, and exhaled slowly through his nose, dragon-style. “Let’s go.”

Sherri hesitated. She didn’t know what to do. Arthur was probably driving to Lake Geneva in his cool red car at that very moment.

He feigned sadness. “Sherri, you don’t seem very happy to see me and I came all this way.”