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.

“I write five letters home a week and my phone bill comes in a box,” he said. “Don’t you like them anymore?”

“I don’t want to talk about this.” Her knuckles turned white on the wheel.

“You better. You’re hurting their feelings.” He leaned with the car into the next curve and looked down a mountainside strewn with loose shale.

Colette picked up a hand and let it drop. “It hurts to talk to them, so I don’t do it. When they’ve got me on the phone, it’s like a big suction forms, drawing me back down there.”

“Does it hurt not to talk to them?”

“Yes, that, too.”

This was enough. He could have said something more, but he knew her limit. It was enough to know she hurt when she didn’t talk to them. If she wouldn’t hurt then, he would have nothing to do with her.

Colette drove even without Paul. Using the car proved that she needed it. Watching people as she drove past them, she checked to see if they saw her, then willed herself not to see them. The tension of trying not to see pedestrians got on her nerves.