20.

She did not go into her motel room, just sat by the pool in the scalding sun. She cried, watching the oiled rainbow swirls in the water. A housekeeper asked if she needed the manager; she shook her head. Her shoulders and scalp burned and her feet puckered to numbness.

The tears were not for the university man, she knew. They came from an alien, frightening place. When she finished, she dragged herself to her room, exhausted and cotton-mouthed as if coming through a desert. She lay on the bed and tried to think what she could do without the banks. What could she do without the banks? She clutched the bed, hearing the Johnny Mercer song until she fell asleep.