“I was a shortstop fifteen years ago and that was only . . . no shit, what’s going on here?”

Jeff swung the door open and looked around the room, “What is going on?” he asked the boy. “I’m the police. I came by to take this woman to dinner.”

To me, Jeff said, “O.K., skip dinner. I’ll leave you alone with this. But cool it on the TV volume or you’ll get yourself tossed out.”

“You really the heat?” the boy asked him.

“Not really really,” I said.

“I come by to take you to dinner, I find Sodom and Gomorrah,” Jeff said. “Well, cops can party too, babe.”

“Babe?”

He said, “I’ll be in room one-seventy, you need me.”

I dreamt a disembodied hand touched my breast. I dreamt I was driving the Buffalo Speedway. I dreamt I fell down and hurt my leg, and Raymond’s dog, Connie, was woofing.

Jeff ate a sausage wound in dough. He tasted his coffee, dabbed his mouth with a paper napkin.

His tie was noosed high on his thick throat. He had his vest buttoned. His dark hair lay flat and wet from his morning shower. He wore a bristling camel’s-hair topcoat.

“Crow-suns,” he said. “They got ham, sausage, egg or no egg. I like the sausage. It’s embarrassing but I like road food. You sure look like holy hell, Paige. Holy hell itself.”

It was early morning. I had a paper cup of orange juice before me that I hadn’t touched. I’d checked out and followed Jeff in his Celica back to 95. We drove thirty miles to this exit with the breakfast Burger King.

“That was a kid you were with. I can’t see that. A boy, not a man. Yeck,” Jeff said.

“With?” I said. “Why argue?”

After a bit, he said, “I mean, if last night was any sample, hey, no wonder you lost your husband. I don’t make judgments; I’m not the judging kind. But that was a bad scene—pot, I could smell it. A kid. Not like I haven’t heard of such stuff but don’t you go to church?”

I looked at him.

“What church do you go to? I want to know. The Black Sabbath Church of Evil Sin?”

“Yes, that one. You’ve said it all now, Jeff. You can calm down.”

“I’m calm. You better eat though, lady. Let me buy you some animal protein.”

“No, really, thanks.”

“Where are you going, besides east?” he asked me. “I just realized I don’t even know.”

I said, “I’ll follow your car for a while. Then, I suppose, I won’t follow it.”

“Makes sense,” Jeff said.