“Cooee?” she called, trying not to laugh. “Anybody home?”

All she needed was to be broken down by the side of the road for the bad movie impression to be complete. No, there should be a—

“You be late, missus,” a husky voice said from her right. Stepping through the door Barb could see an old black woman rocking next to the empty reception desk. “You be very late.”

“I’d say I was lost, but I don’t know if it counts if you’re trying,” Barbara said, grinning and walking all the way into the dimly lit lobby.

“Only counts if you don’t want to be lost, missus,” the black woman said, grinning back. “Been tryin to get lost my-own-self before. Always find my way back home.”

“Nice place,” Barb said. “I don’t suppose there’s a room available?”

“We bout full up of empty rooms, missus,” the woman said, getting to her feet creakily and going behind the desk. She swung an old fashioned ledger around and pointed to a line. “Need your name and address and such and your make of car and tag. If’n you don’t know the tag, jest a description will do.”

Barbara picked up the old pen tied to the ledger with fishing line and after trying to get it to work dug in her purse for her own. Finally she had the ledger filled out.

“Be thirty dollar a night,” the woman said. “Don’t take no plastic. If you ain’t got the cash, you can pay me tomorrow.”

“I’ve got cash,” Barb said, trying not to smile again. It was so charmingly informal it reminded her of Malaysia. The back areas, not Kuala Lumpur which was just New York with worse humidity and drainage. She dug out two twenties, crisp from an ATM and received a crumpled five and five incredibly dirty ones in change. She hadn’t felt so at home in years.