Early next morning she dialed Amtrak and found out exactly when the train would arrive. She would go to the station and create a scene. She would make him get on the next train back.

When she arrived at Union Station, she sat at the end of a long bench by the door and stared across the echoing waiting room. She saw him come in trailing a redcap with a dolly full of bags, whom he dismissed by the telephones. He began to fumble with the Yellow Pages, and Colette found herself wondering about the heft of him, the smell, and then she stood up and walked over. “What you think you’re doing, Paul?”

“Hey.” He smiled but did not reach for her.

“Hey yourself. What’re you doing out here?”

“I just thought I’d see what someplace else looks like. Like you’re doing.” He put down the Yellow Pages, a volume as thick as a wholesale company’s catalog. “How’d you know—”

“How you think?” She crossed her arms. “I hope you bought a round-trip ticket.”

“What’s that mean?”

“You know damn well what it means. I came down here to tell you that I don’t want you bothering me to come back with you. I want you back home.”

He crossed his own arms then. “I’m not planning on bothering you, babe. But you told me a bunch of times that one of the things that’s wrong with us is we never lived nowhere but Tiger Island. That we don’t know anything about someplace else. So here I am.” He ducked his head for emphasis. “Someplace else.”

“Damn it.” She stamped a leather-soled loafer and the noise popped back from the roof. “This is my someplace else.” It was a silly thing to say, and she knew it. “I mean, it’s where I’ve come to make some real money, learn some new things, meet some nice folks.”

He nodded. “Yeah, that’s why I’m out here, too—you know, to get away from the mosquitoes and alligators, gaze at some mountains.”

She looked up at him, at his dark hair, which was growing too long. “You came after me.”

“You the one met me at the station.”

“Paul?”

“What?”

“Go back. Get on the next train and go home.” She moved out of the way of a passing redcap and leaned against the pay phone.

“Naw, I already got me a motel picked out, and then I’m gonna get a place.” He pointed to an ad in the Yellow Pages, and she looked past his finger.

“You fool, that’s in the middle of Watts.”

“It’s a Day’s Inn. I can stay there cheap for a while.”

She shook her head. “You can stay cheaper at your momma’s house.”

“I’m here and I’m staying here. How about this one?” He moved his finger to a Motel 6 listing.

“You’d have to speak Spanish to stay there,” she told him. And she fell into the hunt with him, finding a safe place on the outskirts of Burbank. “There. Stay there and wander around by yourself a couple days until you go crazy for gumbo. Then you’ll see you don’t belong out here.”