bite to eat, and if you're lonely we've got a few minutes to chat,anytime you feel like dropping by. It was an island of light in the darknight. When she opened the door of Tom's pickup truck, she couldhear laughter from the parlor, and as she picked her way through thepaths in the snow to get to the front porch, she could look up and seepeople moving around inside the house, eating and drinking andtalking, all so at ease with each other that it woke the sweetest flavorsin her memory and made her hungry to get inside.

They were laying the game out on the dining room table -- alarge homemade board, meadow green with tiny flowers and a path ofwhite squares drawn around the outside of it. Most squares had eithera red heart or a black teardrop, with a number. In the middle of theboard was a dark area shaped like a giant kidney bean with blackdotted lines radiating out from it toward the squares. And in themiddle of the "bean" were a half-dozen little pigs that Rainie recognizedas being from the old Pig-Out game, plus a larger pig from some child'sset of plastic barnyard animals.

"That's the pigpen," said the mechanic, who was counting beansinto piles of ten. Only he wasn't dressed like a mechanic anymore --he was wearing a white shirt and white pants with fire-engine-redsuspenders. He was also wearing a visor, like the brim of a baseballcap. Rainie remembered seeing people wear visors like that on TV. Inold westerns or something. Who wore them? Bank tellers? Bookies? She couldn't remember.

"What's your name?" asked Rainie. "I've been thinking of you asthe guy in overalls cause I never caught your name."

"If I'd'a knowed you was a-thinkin' of me, Miss Ida, I'd'a wore myoveralls again tonight, just to please you." He grinned at her.

"Three Idas in the same sentence," said Rainie. "Not bad."

"It's a good thing she didn't think of you as `that butt-ugly guy,'"