The woman he spoke with wore rimless glasses and ragtag Army fatigues. Her hair was mostly buzz cut but here and there had stubby braids. “It doesn’t bother me,” I heard her say. “But, see, you brought someone along, and, Raymond? We would never bring someone along if we came to see you, would we? And what is she, anyway, a hitchhiker? Jesus.”

Raymond leaned in to answer and, after a beat, the woman said, “O.K., misunderstood. Sorry. So maybe he was in and out of here, but over a month ago. Only I didn’t tell you that, right? And juiced, like he just came to argue. I mean, the man’s confused. You ought to do something about him before somebody else does, you know? ’Cause I mean the mouth on that guy . . .”

Raymond stopped the car by a tidepool and let Connie out for a stretch. The water was seething with snakes. Raymond threw a stick in and the water swallowed the stick.

“That was a bust, ’cept we know he’s alive. I had my toes crossed he’d be there,” Raymond said.

“What a scary woman,” I said.

“Patton? Nah. Her and her satellites got a gay bar in town, and they’ll always take Raf in, he happens through. On pity, they say, but they enjoy bickerin’ with him because he’s on their level. Connie, get back in the car, girl.”

“He fights with them about being lesbians?”

“No, no. It’s that they’re—they want their own country—what it comes down to. And religion, he’ll get ’em on, like there’s one tryin’ to start up a ministry.”

I nodded.

Leaving Galveston, we saw the last light burnishing the city. In moments, the downtown was a few black buildings set before a copper sky. We didn’t talk much on the return.

“Need I remind you, when you go to buy your turkey, stay away from factory farmed,” my mother said over the phone.

“It can’t be Thanksgiving time,” I said.

Dottie said, “Did they stop putting lithium in the water supply? You’re the second person I’ve talked to who doesn’t know what day it is.”

A silver steady rain played in the leaves, brightened them and waxed their little bit of color. The rain drummed on the windows. I lay on the vinyl couch staring at the hand printing on a white postcard, which read,

Paige,

They ought to change the fucking symbol for infinity. Instead of an eight on its side it should be o—

Zero (Nothing).

Barny, the physicist, hadn’t sent this card as I had thought on first read. It was from Raf. There was no signature, but I knew Raf had sent it.

The card had a Wasnascawa postmark, a part of Boston’s South Shore near where my mother lived at the Seahorse Inn.