One night on the beach, I asked him again to tell me about what was changing him. He reached a hand over and took me for a walk. The sand under our feet was still warm. It was pretty late but I forgot everything when he started to talk.

That morning my chief said to me: "The case is a young woman who died in our hospital, and her husband will be there to go with you and the coffin."

We had to drive to a place about two hundred kilometers to where he was from. So I picked them up and after the paper work was finished, we took the highway and talked about weather and driving conditions. The man was not much older than me but he had dark shadows under his eyes, and a sorrow inside his eyes.

After a while he asked me if he could use the tape recorder. I said: "Of course, yes." I thought to myself: "He wants to hear some music and his wife is in the coffin." But there was no music, it was soft woman's voice telling how much she I loved him and how hard it is to go away from him. He shouldn't stay alone. She hoped that he would find somebody who would love him as much as she loved him.

The man was crying and covering his face with both hands when she was telling about the blue dress she loved so much and she hoped he would bring it for her to wear.

I pressed the accelerator automatically like I wanted to run from the fact that the body in the back and the voice from the tape were together until two days ago.

I opened the window, slowed down and said yes thanks when the man asked me if I wanted a cigarette. When I drove back, everything was different. The big black limousine I drove was no more like Lucky Luchiano's and in my head was a new very strong idea – to quit the well paying job and finish my studies.

I just pressed his hand, turned back and saw our foot prints behind us and the prints of another pair of feet in the sand.

I made strong coffee for us and we looked silently into the orange glow cast by the sun as a new day was born.