The cell phone rang. They both looked at it on the seat for a minute, then Ray picked it up and held it a few inches from his face.

“Yeah,” he said, trying to sound indistinct.

“What happened? You said you were going to call or come back in an hour.” The voice was different than the young guy in the Charger. The voice on the phone was another New En glan-der, but he sounded older and rougher- edged than the young guy from the car at the farm house.

Ray moved the phone away from his mouth again to talk, trying out an imitation of the accent. “I’m all turned around out here. How do I get back there?”

“Did they show up?”

“No, but we can’t stay here.”

“Well, the man here needs his money. You come back here and get cleaned up, you’re going right back out to work, got it?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Tell the truth, I don’t know where the good Christ I am down here either.” There was a hoarse laugh, a sound like someone gargling stones. “Let me ask Scott.” Scawt. There was shouting and calls for Scott and music in the background. A bar, maybe, or a party going on. He heard the older guy saying that the knuckleheads were lost and needed directions back, and then the noise of the phone being passed around, and then the Voice. The guy from the Charger.

“Which one is this?” Ray was about to speak when he heard the question answered at the other end of the line. It’s Eldon, the older guy said, and called him Knucklehead One.

“Eldon?”

“Yeah,” Ray said, trying to keep it quiet.

“Can you find 202?”

“Yeah.”

“Just come up 202 to 422, keep going north.” Nahth. Ray was making mental notes in case he was called on to say more. The young guy gave them directions to a place in the woods between Kulpsville and Lansdale. A place with a long driveway, probably another farm house meth lab.

“Got it, knucklehead?” said the Voice, and laughed.

“Fuck off. Later.” He hung up.

MANNY DROPPED RAY off at his apartment. He showered, put his clothes in a plastic bag and threw them away, and then opened the new things he had bought himself at Wal- Mart. He was still alert, unsure, kept jumping up at every slammed door on the street and looking out the window at the traffic. He looked around and realized he’d have to stop coming back here, find some other place to be. When he looked at the clock he realized it was almost seven, and he sat on his bed in his underwear and thought for a minute if it was smart to put everything on hold while he went to meet Michelle. Thinking of her name knocked it over in his mind, and he quickly got dressed. He pulled the dirty Band- Aid off his head and put on a smaller one, a round dot that was almost covered by his hair.

Outside, the sky ran from bright blue in the east to dark clouds and flashes of lightning in the west, but he couldn’t tell if things were going to get better or worse. Going north toward Doyle -stown he felt weirdly relaxed again, his guard down, as if it were possible to take a time- out from his game and just be a normal human being. He put the radio on and found a station playing a Matt Pond PA song, upbeat music that reminded him of old Moody Blues. The wind picked up, trying to pull the car out his hands and rolling leaves and bits of paper across 611.

It was almost seven twenty when he reached the little coffee shop. He stood outside and watched her through the glass, sitting at a small table, reading a newspaper with a mug of coffee in front of her. The shop was tiny, just a few tables, a counter with ice cream. It looked cool and quiet, and he wanted to go inside, but he just stood and watched her. He could see the lines by her eyes. What could he have been thinking, coming here? Maybe it was just that she looked a little like Marletta. Some quality in her face. The same honey- colored skin, familiar brown and sympathetic eyes. But who was she? He was falling from the top of a building, and she was someone who looked out a window, catching a glimpse of him on his way to the sidewalk.

He put his hands up in front of him. They were mottled with bruises and traced with old scars. He stuck them in his pockets, but he could still feel them, swollen from what he had done. He watched her for a long time. She sipped at the coffee and looked at her watch, but she never looked up. There was something about the way she looked around her, something he recognized. Stealing glances at people and avoiding eye contact. He had taken it for flirtatiousness, but it was something else. He became conscious of the sun going down, of the street darkening. He willed her to look up and wave to him, wave him in so he could go inside and sit down, but she kept her eyes on the paper.

A couple with a baby sat down at the table next to her in a shower of pastel- colored toys and diaper bags, and she turned to look at the back of the baby’s white head. Michelle’s eyes were blank and unreadable, and Ray got that she was seeing things that weren’t in the room.

He looked up the street to his left, and when he swung his head right there was a young guy wearing sunglasses just past his elbow. He had one of those complicated- looking goatees with skinny lines of hair running alongside his mouth and down along his jaw. Ray could see a pimple under the kid’s ear and could smell his breath, fruity and sour from what ever he’d been drinking. The guy was smiling, his head cocked, and he had a jacket on and his hand in his pocket. Ray stepped back, away from the window, hoping that now wasn’t the moment Michelle would finally look up. The guy leaned into him and shook his head, and Ray turned toward him. He sensed someone move behind him, then felt a big hand on his left shoulder and heard breathing close to his ear. The kid raised his eyebrows and nodded as if Ray had asked a question.

“I seen a lot of stupid people, but you’re right up there.” The kid looked up and down the street and kept his voice low. “Man, you walk around like you got no cares. Are you really brave, is that it?” The kid moved the bulge in his jacket where his right hand lay and nodded toward the street. “You Bruce Willis, is that the thing?” The hand on his shoulder squeezed, and Ray flinched. They got closer to the curb, and Sunglasses put a hand up and gestured to someone down the street. Ray heard a throaty engine. He watched a van creep along the curb toward them.

Ray looked up and down the street. There were people around, but no one was closer than a half block away, and it was almost dark. He saw a young couple standing in front of the movie theater, the boy with curly brown hair, the girl gesturing toward a poster. They began to sort money out in front of the ticket booth, and Ray thought that by the time they got out of the movie he’d be in a hole in the woods somewhere and this kid would be kicking dirt and leaves over his face.

“You’re like a goldfish in a bowl, you know it?” The kid shook his head at Ray. “You don’t even hide from us? Come right back to your house, drive around in your own car?” The van pulled up, and Sunglasses put his free hand on Ray’s arm. He was conscious of the big man behind him moving, and then the guy stepped into view, reaching for the sliding side door of the van. He was big across the shoulders and had a shaved head, a black T-shirt, a shelf of gut over his jeans. The kid was still talking. “Eldon called me, told me your name, I figured we’d never see you again.” He started to laugh and swung his head up and down the street. “Is this, like, your job? Nine to five you’re a scumbag thief, then what? You like, punch out, go home, go see a movie?”

The big guy was turned to the door, standing in a gap between two parked cars. The kid was crowding Ray into the gap, trying to jab him with the gun hidden in his coat. There was a buzzing noise and the streetlights came on. The kid reached up and grabbed his sunglasses and began to lift them off his eyes. Ray dropped almost to his knees and then snapped up straight, cracking the top of his head against the kid’s chin and knocking him off balance. The big guy with the bald head was still turned to the van, and Ray pushed with both hands against the kid’s head, smacking it against the hood of the car behind him. The sunglasses rattled onto the car’s hood, the kid blinking, stunned.