I compromised by setting the alarm on “music” and went to bed.

I overslept. The station I’d set the alarm on wasn’t on the air at four-thirty in the morning. I raced into my clothes, dragged a brush through my hair, and took off. There was almost no traffic—who in their right mind is up at four-thirty?—and it had stopped snowing. By the time I pulled onto Santa Fe I was only running ten minutes late. Not that it mattered. She would probably take half an hour to drag herself to the door and tell me the Seven Cities of Cibola had canceled again.

I was wrong. She was standing outside waiting in her red carcoat and a pair of orange Bronco earmuffs. “You’re late,” she said, squeezing herself in beside me. “Got to go.”

“Where?”

She pointed. “Turn left.”

“Why don’t you just tell me where we’re going?” I said, “and that way I’ll have a little advance warning.”

“Turn right,” she said.

We turned onto Hampden and started up past Cinderella City. Hampden is never free of traffic, no matter what time of day it is. There were dozens of cars on the road. I got in the center lane, hoping she’d give me at least a few feet of warning for the next turn, but she leaned back and folded her arms across her massive bosom.

“You’re sure the Seven Cities will appear this morning?” I asked.

She leaned forward and peered through the windshield at the slowly lightening sky, looking for who knows what. “Good chance. Can’t tell for sure.”

I felt like Coronado, dragged from pillar to post. Just a little farther, just a little farther. I wondered if this could be not only a scam but a set-up, if we would end up pulling up next to a black van in some dark parking lot, and I would find myself on the cover of the Record as a robbery victim or worse. She was certainly anxious enough. She kept holding up her arm so she could read her watch in the lights of the cars behind us. More likely, we were heading for some bakery that opened at the crack of dawn, and she wanted to be there when the fried cinnamon rolls came out of the oven.