SHE WAS A NICE-LOOKING woman. Not very tall, thin, with large breasts under a gray cashmere sweater and wide hips and what looked like genuine cowboy boots on, and jeans. She wasn’t really dressed to be out in the rain, and she was coughing. I had my coffee cup in one hand and my first instinct was to offer her some because she looked so miserable there, in pain, upset at her bad luck, and sick besides.

“Hi,” I said. “I’m Jake. That’s my truck you just mashed.”

She coughed and coughed and said how sorry she was.

I said it wasn’t the end of the world-a phrase I had been using with myself all year. She got out her registration and insurance papers and gave me her business card, and since I don’t have a business card, I wrote my name and number on the back of another one of hers and that was the end of it. Carmine had come out and was wielding an old golf club in case there was any trouble, which, of course, there wasn’t. Just before the woman ducked into her Honda, she swung her long black hair away from her face and looked at me. Thank you for not making a big deal about it, the look said. But Carmine interpreted it differently.

“You have the phone of this girl?” he asked, when she had driven away.

I said that I did. We were standing there side by side in the drizzle.

“Wait three days for the cold she has to go away, then call.”

I finished my coffee right there in the rain, and Carmine took the cup, and I went home and more or less straight to bed.

OVER THE NEXT FEW days it wasn’t easy to keep from thinking about the young woman in the cowboy boots because I used my truck for work and I liked to look at it from time to time to cheer myself up.