“Thank you,” I told whoever was helping me. “So crazy.”

A black man was helping me. His face was shaped like a pear. His cheeks bulged; his bald forehead was narrow. He wore a Dickie’s shirt and chinos.

When I bent to scoop up my handbag he held me by the elbow.

“Well, that could mean something,” he said, “that falling down.”

“I know what it means,” said one of the watchers.

“You’re wrong. Go fuck!” I yelled, and the four or five of them rushed away.

“Come on, little chicken,” the black man said. He led me to dining tables—a cafeteria. Above the frying vats was a mural—a battle scene from the Revolutionary War.

I limped. “Who are you?” I asked the man.

“You better sit down,” he said.

“Why? Are you calling the police?” I didn’t sit down.

“No, just wait here. Name’s Richard,” he said.

I kept my gaze on the napkin dispenser and slid onto a chair before an orange tabletop. I looked at the paper napkins until the Richard man returned. He brought a mug of tea with a saucer clapped over it.

“All for you, now listen up,” he said.

“My father says, ‘Listen up,’ ” I said. “Mario, my father. He says it all the time.”

“I’m no advice giver. I don’t call police. I just say what I would do. I’d drink your tea. Then I’d take the cot room we have. We have a room with cots. I’d watch a little TV, and then I’d get some sleep.”

“I’m drinking it,” I said. I fixed a stare on the Revolutionary War mural, at its purple streaks of trees, its redcoats, muskets, cannons. I drank my tea.

From outside, the turnpike traffic sounded like saw blades and knives being sharpened.

Through the window I saw squiggly trees, and the light—a misty fluorescent pink now.

“Just one of those things,” the Richard man was saying. “Only I’d be smart about it.” He repeated: “I don’t give advice or call the authorities. But if I were stoned, or I fell down in public and couldn’t remember it, I wouldn’t be ashamed. I wouldn’t apologize. I wouldn’t feel guilty just yet.”

“May I leave?”

“It would be foolish,” he said.

“I want to go,” I said. “I’m going.”

At the next motel, in the vending area, I saw a figure in the shadows under the stairs. “What’re you doing back there?” I asked.

“Nothin’. My quarter rolled.”

A man drifted into the light and stood on the rug runner before the plump red soda machine.

“I’m a guest here,” he said.

The man was a salesman. He wore a Sigma Chi ring, a wedding band, and a ring etched with baseball bats—an American League champ ring.

His suit was uniform blue, and his loosened tie was shiny. He looked overfed.