“Tell me you don’t see my hips or my butt. Tell me my stomach doesn’t look like a tire.”

Rebecca shakes her head. “I wouldn’t tell you this if you I didn’t think you looked good.” She points to my hip and addresses Eloise. “What do you do about those panty lines?”

Eloise holds up a finger, runs to the underwear barrel, and retrieves the leopard G-string. She snaps it at me, as insubstantial as milkweed. “No way,” I say to Rebecca. “I’m not getting into that.”

“Just try it. You don’t have to get it if you don’t like it.”

I sigh and pull on the slim skirt. I wiggle my underpants off over the shoes and hold the leopard ones up to the light. “The little patch of fabric goes in the front,” Rebecca says.

“How do you know that?” I stand on one leg and then the other. I pull up the G-string and discover, to my surprise, comfort. Between my legs I can barely feel the thin material of the underwear, covering me. I wriggle the skirt back down, and pace a few steps to get used to the feel of fabric against the skin of my rear end. Then I open the door.

“What a knockout,” Eloise says.

Rebecca turns to her. “We’ll take that.”

The whole ensemble costs no more than four dollars. “We will not . Where am I going to wear something like that?” I strip the skinny slip of material off my body so that I am standing braless, in this G-string. “It’s a waste of money.”

“Like four dollars is going to break you,” Rebecca says.

As we are arguing, Eloise reappears with a flimsy rose-colored sheath. “I thought you might like this. You didn’t buy a nightgown, after all.”

I lift the negligee from her hands. Soft, it slips to the floor, spilled on the hay like a broken flower.

Do you know the way there are certain things you try on, once or twice in a lifetime of shopping, and before you even see yourself you are convinced you have never looked so good in your life? I did not feel that way about the black dress, which Rebecca raved about. But this satin sheath, with its braided spaghetti straps and slit up the side, breathes with me.

Before I step outside to show Rebecca I run my hands up my sides. I touch my own breasts. I spread my legs apart, enjoying the way satin slides across hot and bothered skin. So this is what it feels like to be sexy.

I wore something like this on my wedding night, a white teddy with lace at the neck and six fabric buttons down the front. Oliver and I checked into the Hotel Meridien in Boston. Upstairs, Oliver did not comment on the teddy. He ripped it during foreplay, and after we had checked out I realized we had left it on the floor of the honeymoon suite.

I know before I open the door to reveal myself to Rebecca that I am taking this. If I could, I’d wear this one out of the store, and drive down the highways of the Midwest feeling the satin rub in between my thighs each time I shifted gears. I strike a dramatic pose, arched against the back wall of the cow stall.

Rebecca and Eloise applaud. I take a bow. I close the door behind me and very slowly pull the negligee over my head. Talk about a waste of money. The truth is, I’ve left the only man I’ve ever slept with. So who am I going to wear it for?

I start to pull on a pair of the cotton underwear I am going to buy when I stop, and step out of it, and try on the G-string instead. I pull my shorts over this, and button them and zip the fly. When I take a step forward to lace up my sneakers, there is a forbidden sensation of freedom. I feel like I am hiding a secret that no one has to know.

Now that I have ascertained that Jane and Rebecca are on their way to Iowa, I am much less worried by my situation. Today, in fact, I took two spare hours and called the Institute, taking messages down on a small bedside pad at the Holiday Inn.

I will not pat myself on the back yet; it is not the mark of a good scientist to congratulate himself before he comes to a conclusion, an endpoint. But nonetheless I consider this my finest work to date. Starting with next to nothing, I have beat Jane to the punch, if you will-I’ve discovered where she is headed before she even realizes she is headed there. Jane is the type who will be driving through Iowa, and then, having remembered her daughter’s plane crash, will turn off the road at the spur of the moment. Of course it no longer matters. Because when she turns off the road I will be there, and I will take her back to San Diego. It is where she belongs. If my calculations go according to plan, I will be home in time to catch the start of the humpback migration to the breeding grounds of Hawaii.

This morning I spoke to Shirley at the office and asked her to help me with some research. The poor girl was near tears when she heard my voice, for Christ’s sake, it’s only been four working days. I told her to ask a reference librarian in town to help her find microfiche files on the crash of Flight 997, Midwest Airlines, in September 1978. She was to record as much precise information about the site of the crash as possible. Then she was to take the data and call the State Department of Iowa, and using the Institute’s clout, find out the names of the owners of the surrounding farms. Presumably, in two days when I contact her again, I will know whose land I have to stake out.

And so the next challenge, having mastered their route, is to be able to read from a distance the role I have to play. I will need two speeches: one as a penitent husband, and one as a dashing savior. And I will need to assess practically on sight which of these two categories I must fill.

Have I always been this good an analyst?

It is only noon, but I feel like celebrating somehow. I am on top of the crisis. I have at least found all the pieces of the puzzle, if I am still somewhat muddled about fitting them together. I know that I must be back on the road by two in order to reach the next Holiday Inn in Lincoln by dinnertime. Checking my watch (a nervous habit, I don’t really need to see the time), I wander into the hotel lobby to find the bar.

These lobbies all look alike: blue and silver, carpets with a pattern, a de trop glass elevator and a fountain in the shape of a dolphin or cherub. The staff behind the desk even starts to clone from city to city. The lounges are always done in maroon, with round leatherette chairs that look like teacups and spotty highball glasses.

“What can I get you?” the waitress says. Are they called waitresses or barmaids these days? She is wearing a silver plate over her left breast that reads MARY LOUISE.

“Well, Mary Louise,” I say, sounding as pleasant as possible, “what do you recommend?”

“Number one, I’m not Mary Louise. I’m wearing her apron because mine got stolen last night along with my car and my house keys by my no-good motherfucker of a boyfriend. Number two,” she pauses, “this is a bar . Our specialties of the house are whiskey straight and whiskey on the rocks. So do you want to have a drink or are you just wasting my day like every other sorry asshole in this place?”

I look around, but I am the only customer. I decide she must be distressed over her misfortune of the night before. “I’ll have a gin and tonic,” I say.

“No gin.”

“Canadian Club and ginger.”

“Look mister,” the girl says. “We’ve got Jack Daniels and a faucet of Coke. Take your pick. Or come back after the truck delivers more stock today.”

“Well, I see. I’ll have Jack Daniels, straight up.”

She flashes me a smile-she is sort of pretty, actually-and walks away. Roach clip earrings swing in her ears. Roach clips. Rebecca taught me that. We had been walking on a boardwalk at the beach and I picked up this long, trailing feather-and-bead creation. I was trying to place it as an Indian artifact, or a new tourist item from over the border. “That’s a roach clip, Dad,” Rebecca had said casually, taking it from me and throwing it into a trash bin. “You use it to smoke pot.”