"When we gonna eat, man?" he asked Kevin.

"As soon as we find a place," Kevin said, glancing in the rearview rearview mirror. "Doesn't that sound like a good idea, my sweetums? Eggs and sausage and grits? Biscuits and gravy? You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

Dahlia was still in the only position that gave her relief from the insidious itching. She grunted and said, "All I'd like is to see you being dragged behind the car in a gunny sack. I must have told you twenty times that this is the wrong road, but you just kept driving and now we're so lost that the cows probably speak a foreign language. It's all your fault."

Marvel turned around and smiled at her. "Hey, Big Mama, you got to trust me on this. We're not lost. I know exactly where we are. Why, if you were to blindfold me and spin me around three times, I'd still know where we are."

"Yeah," Kevin said, bobbing his head like a dashboard figurine. "Marvel knows where we are."

"So where are we?" she demanded.

Kevin stared pleadingly at Marvel, who was a little bit uneasy about the direction of the conversation (and of their desired destination). The latter finally cleared his throat and said, "On the road to Cleveland. Your man Marvel ain't gonna steer you wrong. I been to Cleveland so many times I could find it in the dark. You just relax and leave the navigating to me, Big Mama."

Kevin accurately interpreted the noise from the backseat as a mixture of disbelief and of displeasure with the increasingly frequent use of the phrase "Big Mama." He wanted to believe Marvel more than anything (except the consummation of the marriage), and he was aware that he didn't have a passel of options at the moment. "Look up there," he said, struggling to sound like a hearty trailblazer. "We're coming to a town, and if that's not a cozy café, then I don't know what it is. It doesn't look busy, so we can be settled in for a nice big breakfast afore you can count to ten.

He parked right as Dahlia reached eight, hurried out of the car and opened her door, and with some exertion, managed to slide her out of the car and get her steadied on her feet.

"Not much of a town," she said, squinting at the few buildings, ramshackle house, and rusted mobile homes on cinder blocks. "It's uglier than Maggody."

Marvel was equally unimpressed. "Or East St. Louis long about January, when the snow turns to slushy mud."

"This looks like a mighty fine café," Kevin said with enough enthusiasm for all three of them. With Marvel trailing behind, he herded his beloved across the rocky parking lot, through the doorway, between the tables, and to a booth where he gestured for her to tuck herself in.

"Ain't this nice?" he said hopefully.

Dahlia looked real hard at the interior and then at him. "I wouldn't let my dog eat here." Nevertheless, she managed to slide into the booth, pick up a menu, and begin to read, saliva gathering in the corners of her mouth as she savored the promise of carbohydrate heaven.

"It's cool, Big Mama," Marvel said as he slid in across from her. "We gonna have ourselves some food and drink. Sure we are." He grinned at the two elderly men sitting at the counter and at the waitress in the kitchen doorway. Something about the way she was eyeing him made him uneasy, but he figured his main man and Big Mama weren't going to drive another mile until they ate. His instincts were very good.

There were people I could call and announce my presence, if not my triumphant return through the gates of the city. There were women with whom I'd done lunch, men with whom I'd worked in the security agency. Lining the gray gullies of the city were stores and shops I'd patronized. Museums, galleries, bars, restaurants, delis-the whole gamut: the sidewalk where I'd first been mugged, the corner from which my car had last been towed, the apartment building where I'd bathed and slept and cooked and told my ex that I was unwilling to continue to feign ignorance of his philandering (I'd called it something else at the time; what we'd called each other afterward was too unimaginative to repeat).

Yeah, I could make a few calls and sally forth, serene in the notion I had neatly severed all emotional entanglements with the people and the place. Or I could hang out in the lobby, waiting to hear that Ruby Bee and Estelle had been murdered in a subway station. Mr. Cambria would protect me from the intrusion of the ghosts (of yuppies past), as well as muggers and others less desirable.

I turned away from the window and determined that I had the place to myself. On my left were double doors that led to a dimly lit dining room, the site of future antics. The registration counter was directly in front of me, with the elevator and stairs on the right. On the left, between it and the dining room, was a hallway which led to an office and ultimately the kitchen, where the cartons of Krazy KoKo-Nut were safely stored.

For lack of much else to do, I went quietly down the hallway, pausing by a closed door long enough to overhear Geri snarl, "Mother will be terribly disappointed, Tina," then continued to a scarred metal door at the end.

The key was in the lock and I was curious, or perhaps merely bored. I eased the door open. The overhead fluorescent lights were on, and water was gushing and splattering in a double sink. As I hesitated, Kyle stood up from behind the stainless steel island, his arms laden with bowls and utensils, and dumped them into the sink. The ensuing foamy splash was accompanied by an expletive more often heard in the alley behind the pool hall in Maggody.

"Doing the dishes?" I inquired politely.

"What do you think? " he said, then bent down and began to withdraw more paraphernalia from within a cabinet, "Geri decides she doesn't need a cleaning crew-not with good ol' Kyle handy. Doesn't need someone to inventory the cabinets-not with good ol' Kyle handy." He appeared with yet another armload and disposed of them as before. "She doesn't even need someone to run out to some damn kitchenware store and buy whatever's missing-not with good ol' Kyle handy. I was on the CEO track not that long ago, not the handy-dandy gofer track."

"CEO of Krazy KoKo-Nut?" I said, trying not to smile in a situation in which there were cleavers within reach.

"My father sold a couple of blocks of stock to an investment firm in Miami, enough to give them the majority position, but they've assured him he can remain president until he retires. I'm the logical successor. There aren't too many MBA's who are frantic to assume the helm of a company that makes soybean flakes, plain and tinted."

"Tinted?"

"We market it as Krazy KoKo-Nut Konfetti. It still tastes like the contents of Ollie North's wastebasket, but it's exceedingly low in fat and cholesterol."

I glanced at the four offending cartons stacked along the opposite wall. "Do they contain…tinted things?"

"I really don't care," he said as he plunged his hand into the water and dislodged the drain stopper. He waited until the water obediently gurgled away, then grabbed various items and placed them on the counter of the island. To his credit, it was sparkly clean. Once he'd transported the last measuring cup, he took a paper from his pocket and scanned it, his lips curling downward as if he were reading the hymns to be played at his funeral. "I don't suppose you might want to help me with this?" he said, glancing up with a nervous smile.

I felt a pang of pity for him. His father had thrown him to the wolves, in this case, Geri, and she'd wasted no time letting him know her opinion of him. He reminded me of Kevin Buchanon, who was forever cringing and simpering under Dahlia's beady disdain, fearfully begging for a pat on the head like a mistreated puppy. Kyle was trying not to appear that way, to maintain an edge and a slim measure of control over a situation in which he had none, but he was fooling none of us.