When they were once more on Route 128 and the car was boring into the night in the direction from which it had come, she touched his arm.

“We can be the start of new generations,” she said.

He nodded and smiled. Then he went to sleep.

When he awoke they were just crossing the Sagamore Bridge.

“Where in hell are we?”

“We had the free time all arranged,” she said. “It seemed a pity simply to go home and waste the holiday.”

“But where are we going?”

“A place I know.”

So he remained quiet and let her drive. Forty-five minutes later they were in Truro, according to the roadsign illuminated briefly as she turned the car off Route 6 and onto a Cape Cod road, two ruts of white sand divided by a track of sawgrass. They topped a small rise and high above them and to the right a revolving finger of light searched the black sky at the edge of the sea. The sound of the surf was there suddenly, as though someone had switched it on.

She had slowed the car almost to a stop. He didn’t know what she was looking for, but whatever it was, she found it and turned the car off the road. He saw nothing, only the inky blackness, but when they got out of the car he was able to see the more solid darkness that was a small building.

A very small building, a cottage or a shack.

“Do you have a key?”

“There is no key,” she said. “It’s bolted from the inside. We go through the secret entrance.”

She led him around to the back, small pine trees tearing at them with invisible fingers. The windows were boarded up, he saw on closer inspection. “Give the boards a yank,” she said.

He did and the nails came out easily, as though they had made the trip many times. She slid the window up and wriggled over the low sill. “Watch your head,” she said.

He bumped it anyhow, on the upper bunk. The room was closet sized, making even his room at the hospital appear to be spacious by comparison. The crude wooden bunks took up most of the space, allowing only walking access to the door. The illumination came from bare light bulbs, turned on by pull strings. There were two other chambers identical to the one through which they gained entrance; a minuscule bathroom with shower, no tub; and an all-purpose room with kitchen facilities, a rickety rocker and a moth-eaten sofa full of bumps and sags. The decor was classical Cape Cod: clam shells for ash trays, a lobster pot for a coffee table, sand dollars and starfish on the mantel, a rigged surf rod propped in one corner, in another corner a gas stove which she primed expertly and lit with ease.

He stood there, swaying. “What can I do?” he asked.