"Were both in a phone booth, about ten miles south at a Texaco."

"And you‘re coming back?"

"Yes. Soon."

Almost before I hear them or see them, I smell them, tobacco, baby powder, wet wool, cold; and after he puts the sleeping baby on the couch and touches me, just tobacco, wool, cold. "How’s the baby?"

"A pain in the neck the last hundred miles, but fine now."

The baby, his face creased by the bent cap brim, stretched one fist, then brings it close, licks it.

"His cap."

"Would you take it off? I have to get another suitcase from the car."

When I bend down, the baby turns his head; his back curls. The cap slips, and I pull it free and put it on a chair. It is that simple. In the middle of the floor, where he‘ll be safer, I smooth a blanket for him. When I lift him, soft, willing, but weighted down by heavy shoes, he nestles. I untie the shoes. By the time the door slams, he is covered with his own yellow quilt and still sleeping. All the while, sleeping. His father says, "You‘ve tucked him in, thanks. Too tired to talk. Tomorrow. And nothing‘s settled."

No, nothing‘s settled. In our bedroom now, flung across the bed, the other traveller also sleeps, his trousers damp, dragged black at the cuffs from the rain. I grab his sneakers by their heels and tug. When they hit the floor, he groans, rolls. His shirt wrinkles up above his rib cage.

"Too tired to talk. Tomorrow." If he hadn‘t been so tired, he might have laughed at his own joke. Why now, at the end, should we talk?

In the kitchen, I sit, the only one awake in this sleeping household. I don‘t want the man. I don‘t want the baby. But when the baby cries, I go to the baby.