It was hopeless. We all knew it. Annette kept trying, and Merker kept badgering her, but if anything, her attempts to copy the Marilyn Winter signature were only getting worse. Once, she wrote “White” instead of “Winter.”

“I forgot,” she said.

Merker was sweating. To me, he said, “What are we gonna do?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe we should get Ludmilla to do it.”

Merker squinted. “Very funny. We might as well go down to the zoo and see if we can fit that wig onto a fucking hippo.” Fed up, he reached across the table and yanked the wig off Annette’s head. He’d caught one of her own hairs, and she yelped. She pushed her chair back angrily and went to get the baby, and Merker’s finger went to his nose. He grabbed Annette’s pen to try to get at something that was buried pretty deep. I couldn’t look.

“This is just fucking fantastic,” Merker said. “She’d of been perfect, too. She’s got the same kind of tits and everything.”

I didn’t feel it was worth pointing out to Merker that the bank officials, unlike him, might not reduce a person’s legitimacy to a bra size, that there might be other criteria.

My cell phone rang. Merker wiped the end of the pen on his sleeve, dropped it onto the table, and eyed me warily as I took the phone out of my jacket. “Who is it?” he asked.

I glanced at the number. “It’s my wife, calling from work.” Sarah did seem to be developing a habit of calling at the most amazing times. Tied up in a barn, held hostage by a homicidal maniac. But it was always nice to hear from her.

“Don’t answer it,” Merker said.

“She’ll just call again,” I said. “I can handle this.”

He shook his head in frustration. He was having a very bad day. “All right, take it.”

“Hello,” I said.

“Hey,” said Sarah. “Where are you? Are you home?”

“Not at the moment,” I said.

“I tried to call home, and I think there’s something wrong with our number. I called and I got this other person. I asked for you and he said there was no one there by that name.”

“Really,” I said. Leo, maybe. Or Ludmilla, who didn’t sound particularly feminine.

“So then I called back, and there was no answer. But since you’re not home, I guess that makes sense. Maybe the lines got crossed the first time.”

“Maybe.”

“Listen, that was nice, last night, and breakfast.”

“It was,” I said.

“It hasn’t been nice, being angry with you,” Sarah said. “I don’t like it. But I think, with this stuff with Trixie behind us, I think we can start over, you know what I mean?”

“Sure.”