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—until she awoke suddenly, startled by the sealed silence of the empty car, to see the stretch of bleak parking lot and the single-story hotel, fifteen units, with a brightly lit office in which Rake stood, his silhouette tall and angular, his head big and round, as he turned to look out through the window at her, lifting his arm and his hand and his finger in a sign, as if to say “one minute,” while the clerk handed him a clipboard. Then he came bounding out, with a slightly bowlegged walk, his hands jammed into his pockets, his face firm and grim, and he took her from the car, told her to stretch her legs, and led her into the room—wood paneled and smelling of lemon polish and bleach and stale cigarette smoke, with two grimy bedspreads, a television set against the wall, a Bible in red artificial leather on each nightstand. After she used the bathroom, he told her to sit in a chair.
    When she came up and out again, Rake was counting and sorting tabs and baggies on the bedspread while she watched television, the picture unsteady, an old family drama with a clean-cut father and a runty, troubled kid with a crew cut who kept making wisecracks when they asked him to do something around the house. The mother had a beehive hairdo and wore an apron over her dress as she moved through the scenes with devotion to the tasks at hand. The show came in and out, bits of dialogue leading to laugh-track hilarity, the sound of waves hitting a shore. When she opened her eyes she saw, in a quivering black-and-white image, a father with his briefcase at his side, receiving a highball from the mother’s hand, holding it up like a chalice and saying something inaudible that sparked another, bigger laugh-track roar that sounded like a wave hitting a shore hard and then leaving with a long, slow, receding hiss, and then more waves to punch lines she didn’t hear because, on the bed, she was trying to remember and to reconstruct her own family tableau: father, mother, brother, the house, Colonial, the fat maple trees out front …
     … she woke to the sound of Rake snoring and got up and went to the bathroom to pee and sat on the seat and stared at her knees, which were ruddy and brushed and scabbed. Then she went back into the bedroom and went to the window and lifted a blind and stared out at the parking lot. Two cars. Their own and an old G.T.O. grainy, sandpapery in the moonlight, and the playground, the spaceship monkey bars, the swing with the rotting seat, cordoned off with chain link. She watched a police cruiser, old-style, with a single dome, deliberately slow, blink, turn in, and sit.
    Rake, she whispered. He rolled over beneath the sheets and snored again and seemed to settle even deeper into sleep. The room stank. The pills glinted.
    There was a thump of doors and when she peeked again the cops were outside, adjusting their belts. One removed his hat. He slid his hand a couple of times up and over his scalp in a habitual motion and then slapped the brim of his hat against his thigh, as if to shake the dust from it, cowboy-style.
    Rake, she said again. She went and gave him a nudge and stood back as he snorted and rolled over and settled back into sleep. So she nudged him again and he finally turned over and said, What the fuck do you want?
    Cops, she said.
    He sprang up, pulling on his boxers, and went to the window, lifting the slat with his thumb.
    What were you doing up?
    I was just up.
    You were just up?
    I was just up.
    You use the phone?
    No.
    Out front, the cops seemed to be in surveillance mode, thumbs in their belts, turning one way and another. A car passed on the road and they turned to watch it.
    Cops don’t just appear out of the blue like this. They’re onto something. They sniffed us out, he whispered. This is perfect, exactly. This is hoped-for shit. It can’t get any better than this.
    Pulling his shirt on, tucking it neatly, he went to his rucksack and found his gun, held it up, spun the cylinder,