“She’s one of those militant hookers I’ve been hearing about—she’s into tyin’ you up and causin’ you pain,” Don interrupted his song to confide to Elliot Barlow and me, in a raspy voice. “She shouldn’t be standin’ out in the snow—that’s just so sad!” Don struggled to say, between coughs. He was shivering, his teeth were chattering, he could barely talk, but he couldn’t stop singing.

The limo driver had heard Don’s song and his cough, and she recognized the little English teacher and me—even in our snowshoeing clothes. “Well, look at you two—you look like a couple Russians tonight,” she told us. The way she’d said Russians didn’t sound entirely complimentary. “The poor choirboy shouldn’t be out in this weather,” the Russian chauffeur said. “Don’t bring this poor boy here to die—he’ll be better off dying at home,” she told us.

We knew this had been Dave’s parents’ theme, but Mr. Barlow and I just looked at each other. We knew it was beyond us; we had no hope of sorting out the misunderstandings between Dave’s parents’ driver and the Damaged Man. Don thought she was a militant hooker, into bondage and whips, or worse—this sounded like a Damaged Don song. The limo driver thought Don was a dying AIDS patient, who should go back home to die, instead of dying at St. Vincent’s—all because of Don’s cough and the lamentation of the song she’d heard him singing. “You were singing, weren’t you?” the chauffeur asked Don, but he hadn’t heard her—not with the two ski hats.

“I should go home, to Montana—I should just go back to Great Falls,” Don told us, as if he’d suddenly decided to go home to die, although he’d not heard what the driver said.

The snowshoer took off Don’s two hats. “Going back to Great Falls is one option, Don, but not tonight—tonight you should stay with Adam and me,” Elliot Barlow said. There was more confusion caused because the snowshoer had first met the driver when the little English teacher had been dating Dave. “That was when I was a man,” the pretty Mr. Barlow had to explain. That Dave’s parents’ driver wasn’t a prostitute had to be explained to Don; that Damaged Don was a singer-songwriter, who was not dying of AIDS, had to be explained to the Russian chauffeur.