“Okay,” I say. “Listen. I’ve got a lot of work to do, so it may be late when I get off. Maybe around six or seven. I get all the overtime I can. Why don’t we try to get out there about nine? That’ll give me time to get home and get cleaned up and all. I’ve got to catch a ride.”

“That’s fine,” she says. I’ll get us a table.”

“Okay,” I say. I think for a moment. I might as well go ahead and ask her. “Listen. You want me to get us a room?”

She waits three seconds before she answers. “Well. You can get one if you want to, Gary. I’m not promising anything. But you can get us a room if you want to.”

She’s already happy and high when I slide into a chair beside her. It looks like the only seat left in the place is the one she’s been saving for me.

“Hey,” I say, and I set a fifth on the table. She leans over and kisses me. Her eyes are bright even in the darkness; they seem to belong to a woman different somehow from the one I wrestled with in the car the night before. The table is no bigger than a car tire. “How long you been here?” I say.

On the floor to the music she moves with drunken feet, pressing herself against me, her washed hair in my face sweet and soft. We dance a few times and then she tells me she wants to talk.

“What it is, see, he’s wanting to catch me. Messing around.”

“I don’t get it,” I say. “How come?”

“He wants me to give him a divorce. But I ain’t gonna do it. I ain’t gonna do one thing that’ll make him happy.”

I don’t care about any of this. I don’t want to know her problems. She acts like she’s the only one who has any.

“Let’s talk about something besides you and your husband,” I say. “Why don’t you quit thinking about him? You’d probably have a better time. You know it?”

She seems to realize with sadness that what I’m saying is true. “I know it,” she says. “I’ll hush about him.”

But she doesn’t. She keeps bringing his name up and looking all around in the bar, trying to spot him at large. I know there is nothing to do but be patient. I have a motel key in my pocket.

We pull into a parking space next to the wall of a Day’s Inn and she turns off the lights and ignition. The aluminum numerals on the red metal door read 214.

“Let’s go in,” I say. I open my door.