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anything.
    “Are you okay?” I said.
    “I don’t know.”
    “What is it?”
    “We should talk about this.”
    “So go ahead.”
    “I need some air first,” she said, sitting up. “Come on, it’s not too late. I want you to show me around.”
    I laughed. “There’s not much to see. Not this time of year.”
    But she was already putting her clothes back on. A few minutes later, we were both downstairs in the lobby, wrapped up tight in our coats, ready for our evening stroll. I looked around for my friend from the elevator, but he was nowhere to be seen.
    “What is it?” she said.
    “Oh, there was just a man down here before. He was acting kinda strange.”
    “An old guy, right? All dressed up?”
    “Yeah, did he say something to you, too?”
    “No, I just saw him in the dining room yesterday. When I was having dinner alone. He walked by and tipped his hat to me.”
    “I think he’s got a screw loose.”
    “I’m sure he’s harmless,” she said. “He sort of fits in with the place, doesn’t he? All these old artifacts in the display cases.”
    The young doorman opened the door for us. He still had the shovel, and it looked like he had almost finished the sidewalk. Until this new snow had started falling. Whatever they were paying him, today it wasn’t enough.
    We walked down Portage Avenue, toward the locks. They were closed for the winter, of course, so there were no ships to see. The entire river was frozen now, all the way across to Canada. I told her this street would be busy in the summer, when the shops were open and the tourists were walking around and watching the locks from the observation deck. It was hard to imagine now.
    “What did you tell me?” I said. “That you’ve never been over here before? All those years you were living across the river?”
    “I drove through a couple of times,” she said, “but I never came into town, no. I heard all the stories, though.”
    “What stories?”
    “About Soo Michigan. What a wild town it is. At least, when I was growing up.”
    I looked down the empty street. The snow was falling and the wind was kicking up clouds all along the high snowbanks. Some wild town. At that moment, it was hard to imagine anyone even living here.
    “My grandfather never wanted me to come over here,” she said. “He told me there were gunfights and prostitutes and all sorts of bad stuff going on across the bridge.”
    “I think maybe he watched too many Westerns.”
    “Yeah, well, some Canadians think all of the States is that way.”
    We walked some more. The sun went down. From the end of the street we could see the International Bridge, the lights glowing in the darkness. It started to feel a lot colder.
    We made our way back to the hotel, holding hands like schoolkids. What she had said back in the room, about wanting to talk—I kept waiting for it to happen. But it didn’t. The lights were on outside the hotel and the doorman was there shoveling the snow.
    We went inside with faces red from the cold air and snow all over our shoes. It felt good to sit down in the dining room and to feel the heat thawing us out. The room was elegant, with chandeliers and big windows overlooking the river. On a different night in a different season there would have been ships moving through the locks just outside, great seven-hundred-foot freighters on their way to Lake Huron. But on this night all we could see outside was the snow falling. Endless snow, that’s what this winter had become.
    When we had ordered our food, I noticed the old man again. He was sitting on the other side of the dining room, facing us, with a big cloth dinner napkin tucked into his collar. We were the only three customers in the place. He gave me a tip of his hat.
    “There he is,” I said.
    “Who?” She turned to look and then gave the man a little wave when she saw him.
    “Maybe he’s a ghost,” I said. “He died in this hotel and now he haunts all the guests.”
    She smiled for just a