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vendor shook his head. “No. He came in for a paper. Also a box of licorice. Also some stamps.”
    â€œWas Evelyn with him?” Robert asked, knowing she would not have been.
    â€œNo,” Del said. “He told me he had her working too hard.”
    Robert read the headlines on the front page for the fifth time and still they did not register; he was thinking about his parents.
    â€œWhat are you doing now, Rob?”
    â€œI’m a student.”
    â€œHell, you’ve already been a newspaperman. Why go back to school?”
    â€œI’m finishing a course I never took,” Robert said. “It’ll help me in the field.”
    â€œYou heard the rumor the Scale ’s reopening?”
    â€œA pipe dream,” Robert said, “of frustrated ex-­jocks who can’t stand the idea of their kids not getting any ink.”
    â€œThey’ve got the presses over there,” Del said. “You can look in the window and see the rolls of newsprint, typewriters, some with paper still in them. This town is dying for a paper. It’s ready to go.”
    â€œIt’s all in receivership,” Robert said, though he was only repeating the last rumor he had heard. “Once they catch up with Thrips it’ll all be sold to pay his creditors.”
    Del Cobbler blew smoke at Robert, turned his back on him. “You were the only one in town who didn’t hate to see that paper fold,” he said.
    â€œSorry, Del.”
    â€œWhat sort of guy is glad to lose his job?”
    â€œI hated it,” Robert said.
    â€œWithout the Scale , this town’s got no identity.”
    â€œI’m not to blame for that.”
    â€œAnd my business has gone to hell without a local paper to push,” Del complained. When he became angry the strip of skin above the rim of his shade turned scarlet, like contrary thoughts pinched and boiling. “Nobody wants to read about Madison or Milwaukee. They get sports and weather off TV. I do less business than your folks, for Christ’s sake.”
    â€œYou have reached the bottom of the barrel,” Robert said, his sarcasm in vague defense of his parents.
    He was living with Dave and Evelyn then, in the small house a short walk from their store. When he worked at the Scale he had taken some rooms in a house on Oblong Lake. But he had failed to save his money and was forced to return home, though in the days after losing his job he sat alone counting his money, trying to stretch it. There had been rumors of a final paycheck, and with it he might have made it another month, but Thrips had left nothing behind and Robert had no choice.
    His father by then had repainted Robert’s old room and converted it into a den, with a leather-­covered loveseat, a TV, an NFL wastebasket, and a small dry bar with an ice bucket, glasses, and nothing stronger than grape soda to drink.
    Robert went to the house a week after the paper closed. Through the front-­door window he saw his mother and father lying in each other’s arms on the couch. They were dressed, his mother’s eyes were closed, and Dave’s face was tucked out of sight against her breast. For a moment, Robert almost turned away. But his parents only lay there in the half darkness, and soon Robert heard faint music through the door, and a motion at the edge of the scene was Evelyn keeping time with her foot.
    He rang the bell. They did not break away as if embarrassed. Evelyn’s eyes opened, and Dave’s head pivoted from its nook of sanctuary to peer at the door. Robert held a hand to the glass. Then they slowly unwound from each other, arms and legs taking turns letting the opposite number free, a person unraveling, becoming two ­people. Arm in arm, they came to the door.
    â€œRobert. Come in,” Evelyn said. She was wearing a red robe, and smoothed the front with her hands.
    â€œI was expecting this visit,” Dave said.
    â€œDreading it?”