Raymond said, “This way, they’ll rape you on full stomachs, with more energy.”

We looked over at the storm victims.

The teenage girl, lifting her mime-mask face, held up her stick and rocked it back and forth like the needle of a metronome.

“Bus crash on the way to the bughouse,” I sang. “All the inmates here at the inn . . .”

“I can handle them,” Dottie said.

“As you’ve been doing! Why not throw them a clambake.”

“Oh, lay off that, Paige. I was only going to feed them. The chowder might be contaminated anyway,” she said.

“Atta way, Mom, give them salmonella.”

“What you two should do is smoke some of my Colombian,” Dottie said. “There’s a shoebox of it left, and believe me, it helps.”

The walls outside the Colonel’s Suite wore faded paper with an egg-and-dart pattern. On the north wall an aneroid barometer said the air pressure was falling fast. It was dusk.

I swung open the suite’s door.

Balanced on the vanity was Raymond. He held a Bible, didn’t turn his head, but said, “Hi ya, Paige.”

The sea window on the far wall vibrated. Its shutters were latched, nailed, and ribbons of caulking were plugged all around the inside glass, yet the window rocked tensely in the wall.

“You ever read the conversion tables, back of the Gideon? Like the weights and measures? Says one talent’s the equal of seventy-five pounds. Or a shekel’s same as two- fifths an ounce. Now, a handbreadth . . .”

I slid down the wall like a thrown plateful of noodles, and said from the floor, “I’m flattered and grateful that you came a million miles in a holocaust just to visit me, Raymond.”

“But?”

“Why did you? I don’t mean that how it sounds. But why did you?”

“I felt dirt miserable about scarin’ you off,” he said and shrugged. “And wanted to see you.”

I said, “I’m glad you came. Which is wrong. I shouldn’t be . . .”

We could hear the voices of more people arriving; hear Dottie chattering.

“Get up on the bed,” Raymond said, as he hopped from the vanity. He dead-bolted the door.

Raymond awakened as I slid from under the quilt out into the ferocious cold of the drafty room.

“Time is it?” he asked with his eyes closed.

“Only four-thirty or five, but it’s getting dark. Sorry I woke you.”

“ ’S all right. Snap in and out. Haven’t really slept since my drinking slip. That’s the problem with me.”

“Only problem,” I said, pulling on my T-shirt. I looped the silver chain with Raf’s miraculous medal around my neck. I always wore the medal but it hid under my clothes.

“Lemme see that,” Raymond said.

The storm was hammering the inn. Above the wind’s roar, there were thuds as strayed tree limbs slammed the walls. From a floor above came a little shattering noise, the explosion of window glass.