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take it now but I think it’d be better if you gave it overnight tonight yet. Want maybe to look at it?”
    I wanted maybe to look at it, and we started off. Then he turned and said to Arch, “Oh, you want gas, Mr. Britten?” and when Arch nodded he called out to another mechanic to take over the pump and led me up a ramp to the second floor. It made me feel good, for some reason, that the little redhead had called me Rod and Arch Mr. Britten.
    We walked past a couple of other cars and there it was, black and shiny and looking as though it had just rolled off the assembly line—except these days they don’t have assembly lines that roll off cars like that one.
    No, I didn’t remember it. But I was in love with it now, love at first sight. I walked around it, admiringly. I lookedthrough the glass of the door at the instrument panel—the speedometer showed only 56,000 miles—and inside and out it looked better than new.
    “A beauty,” Joe said. “You don’t get ’em like that nowadays. I wouldn’t trade this for three or four like your brother’s, and his is a forty-nine. This baby’s got stuff. That engine’s tuned like a Swiss watch.”
    I was suddenly worried. “The crash didn’t jar it any, did it, Joe?”
    “Nah. Just the fender and door, and bet you can’t even tell which fender it was.” I couldn’t. Joe said, “Look, we’re charging all the traffic will bear for the body work, since that’s on the insurance, and going as light as we can on the paint job.”
    “Swell of you, Joe. Always stick an insurance company.”
    He grinned. “And always give a good customer, and a guy who knows cars, a break. You got a honey there, Rod.”
    I thought so too. My fingers itched to lift the hood and count the horses, but if I wasn’t going to drive it off I wasn’t going to touch it either—and I wasn’t going to drive it off if Joe thought another night’s drying would be good for the paint.
    I said, “It’s a swell job, Joe. I’ll be in for it sometime in the morning. Will you see she’s full of gas and ready to go—and check the oil and the water and everything and—is there anything else you can do to her?”
    He laughed. “That’s why you’ve got a good car, Rod. You never want to know whether anything has to be done to it; you just want to know whether anything can be done to it. Okay, I’ll check everything as soon as I come on at nine; get it any time you want after that.”
    I said, “You are speaking of the woman I love. Do not call her an
it
.”
    When we got back downstairs, Arch had had to pull the convertible out of the way to let another car at the pump and he was looking impatient. So I got in without trying his patience any more.
    “Where do you want to go?” he asked me, when we turned onto the street again.
    I said, “I don’t care.” I didn’t. I was just living until tomorrow morning when I could get the Linc out and gosomewhere, anywhere, for a long drive. And listen to it purr; I knew damn well it would purr.
    Funny, I thought, I’d loved Robin once and apparently it had hurt me to lose her. But I hadn’t fallen in love with her all over again at first sight, like I had the Linc. My fingers had itched to lift the car’s hood, but they hadn’t itched to lift Robin’s dress. Well, not much.
    Arch stopped the car in front of a swanky apartment building on Renslow Boulevard. He got out on his side and said, “Come on.”
    “Come on where?”
    “A guy I want you to meet.”
    Something about the way he said it made me suspicious. “What’s his name?”
    “Krieger.”
    “
Dr.
Krieger? Isn’t that the psychiatrist you mentioned? I’m not going to a psychiatrist, Arch, even to meet him socially. I told you that and I meant it.”
    He said, “Listen—” and then, “Oh, hell, I’m not going to stand here while we talk.” He got back in the car. “How’d you go for a drink?”
    “No,” I said, and then reconsidered. “Well, a beer maybe. If you insist