"Shots of the pool now… and all the schmucks lying around in their resort outfits. Hot shit, huh? Seventy-five bucks a day, couple hundred bucks for the jazzy outfits… Here comes sport now, rum collins for the broad and a Heineken. Loaded and he still drinks beer. That's your background showing, man. Eleven years on the line at Dodge Main. Couple of shots and a beer every day after the shift. Right?"

Eleven and a half years, Mitchell was thinking, seeing himself in the green bathing trunks that were too big for him because he had lost fifteen pounds in one month after meeting Cini. Eleven years and seven months exactly. Two-eighty an hour when he quit.

He saw the beach again, deserted now in the early evening. Their last day. He had stayed in the room to take a nap and she had gone for a walk.

"And as the sun sinks slowly in the west… we leave the beautiful Bahamas, isles of intrigue and plenty of extracurricular screwing, and get back to real life."

He saw his car on a street, moving, the bronze Grand Prix.

"We spliced this in with the other," the voice-over said, "so we wouldn't waste your valuable time changing film. You recognize it, sport? That's you. Now watch where you go."

Mitchell knew where the car was going. He remembered the day and the time and the street and the Caravan Motel.

There it was.

A zoom lens on the camera got him coming out of the motel office and driving over to unit number 17. There was a good shot of him looking out toward the street before he opened the door and they went inside.

Fifteen bucks. Not a bad place. It had been their third time. They had taken a shower together and drunk a bottle of champagne in bed, before, during and after, with a lot of kissing and squirming around, kissing the way he hadn't kissed in twenty years. She had said to him, "I think I'm falling in love with you. If I'm not already." But he did not say anything about love to her that time.