He grinned. “You belong where your heart is.”

“Oh, don’t give me that. Your heart is in the Gruenwald’s engine room.”

“No, I am in love with the Larousse twins, and I came out here to forget them.” He bent to pick up his heaviest suitcase.

She put a fist to her mouth. “What are you going to do out here?”

“Find me a job. Etienne the giant’s second cousin works for the state downtown. He’ll help me out.”

She stepped away slowly, and before she turned for the entrance, she told him that he’d need all the help he could get.

* * *

She went back to her third-floor apartment and stared through the sliding doors, down into a vast cement ditch, a shallow and petrified watercourse an eighth of a mile wide, bottomed with skull-size rocks. She looked around at her living room, which was furnished with modern walnut tables and a tan leather sofa she had bought after getting her first paycheck. No one had seen it except for her. As pretty as she was, no one interesting had asked her for a date, except for a man she worked with who only wanted to sleep with her, and who made that fact as obvious as the wrinkles in his forehead. She looked at the phone and thought of calling home, but instead she got up and made a cup of instant coffee, frowning at its smell, adding sugar and cream, mixing it carefully, and then pouring it down the sink. Late that night she stood next to her bed and remembered what it was like to slow-dance with Paul. Sliding her bare feet, she closed her eyes and turned slowly. She briefly stood up on her toes.

Four days after Paul arrived, Colette was sitting at her desk in the trust management office and looked up, her thumb in someone’s will, and wondered where her husband was. She felt that by now he should have made some obnoxious gesture. The following Monday she went to lunch with a coworker, but she couldn’t concentrate on her grilled tuna. Then she began to wonder where he was on a daily basis, actually scanning the police reports in the paper for a story of some dumb outlander who had tried to go to a dance hall in a bad part of town. At the end of November she called home and her father answered. The old man took two minutes to recognize her, and then her mother came on the line, sharing the news, asking questions. The call lasted an hour, the first long call she had given them, and it was painful to hear their voices, because it made her want to be with them. That was why she called so seldom.

When the conversation began to slow, she was proud of not breaking down and asking about Paul. And then her mother said it. “Colette, has Paul been by to see you?”

“No, ma’am. I know he’s out here somewhere, but…”