Paul looked around at the instrumentation, felt the dash as though it were a museum piece. “How much did this thing cost?”

“A lot.” She stared at him hard.

“Nice machine,” he said. “Nice color, silver.” He looked at the emblem that rose from the hood like a gun sight. “This is the kind of car that people point at and say things like ‘Hey, look at that!’”

She leaned over and gave him a wet kiss, then mashed the accelerator, the car bounding away from the curb in a puff of brown smoke and squealing into the first curve. Paul was oblivious to the velocity and the noise, able to feel only a cool spot on his lips as they drove all the way to the foot of the observatory road, where the electric yawp of a siren rose behind them and a state patrolman pulled Colette over. He was a motorcycle officer in pants so tight, he looked like a ballet dancer. He took off his mirrored sunglasses, looked at Colette and then at the automobile, seeming to focus on the hood ornament, bobbing his head as though amused at some private joke. Then he wrote her a ticket for $206.

Colette took the paper without a word, raised her window, and smiled, driving off in a wispy clatter of valves.

Paul looked at her and forced a smile. After a while he said, “Rides smooth.”

“Just as smooth as your Ford?” She made a turn.

He wanted to say, Just as smooth, but he caught himself in time. “No comparison” was what he said.

“I won’t have to buy another car for twenty years.”

Paul frowned at the thought of having to ride in the same car that long. “Is that how long the payments last?”

She smiled back thinly, willing to take it as a joke this time. Nothing, nothing at all, was going to ruin her afternoon.

* * *

The next week she picked up Paul every day after work and they took the car everywhere, down to the beach, up to the mountains, spinning around curves as though pursued by bandits. Paul was the only person she knew who had the time to ride around like a dash ornament and look at scenery. Most of the time he was silent, like a man waiting for something to happen. Sometimes he and Colette would argue and he would let himself lose. A forbidden topic was their relationship. A sore topic was her parents.

“It wouldn’t kill you to call them more, maybe go home for a quick visit,” he said, watching the huge tires of an oil truck slide by his window as she passed it on a two-lane road.

“I call them once every two weeks.”

“Your mom’s not well. Your dad’s got that old-timer’s disease.”

“Alzheimer’s, you fool.”

“I knew that. I used to know that, I think.”

“Be quiet.”

“They probably think you’re too poor to call.”

“Come on, spare me the guilt,” she said, zipping around a small pickup.