It was an official antique, forest green, with a bright chrome grille and a handmade maple rack over the bed for lumber and ladders. Every time I looked at the truck from a certain angle I could see the broken taillights and dented fender and I wondered how hard it would be to get replacement parts and I thought about the black-haired woman coughing in the rain.

I didn’t mention her to anyone, not even to Gerard, who works with me and is closer to me than my own brother and sister. I waited three days-for her cold to go away and so as not to seem overly anxious-then dialed the number on her card.

“Hi,” I said. It was my lunch hour, I was calling on Gerard’s cell phone, because I didn’t own a cell phone anymore. I didn’t own a TV, either, or a microwave, or a single pneumatic nailing gun, even though I could have afforded those things. I was sitting on a set of exterior steps we’d built as part of a new addition to a professor’s house in Cambridge, tuna sandwich on my lap. “I’m Jake Entwhistle,” I said into the phone. “You mashed up my truck the other night in front of Betty’s.”

For a few seconds there was no reply. It sounded to me as though she was still coughing, but trying to stifle it. I pictured her turning her face away from the phone.

“The doughnut shop,” I suggested, when she didn’t speak.

“My insurance company should have sent you the papers by now.”

“I’m not calling about that. I’m calling to ask you out.”

“I’m at work,” she said.

This didn’t seem like a promising answer, but I kept trying: “A restaurant dinner, on me. Maybe a walk around the block afterwards if it’s a nice night and we get along.”

“Thank you, but I can’t,” she said. “And I’m very busy right now.”

“Alright.”

“You should get the insurance forms within a day.”

“Alright,” I said. “I’m not worried. It’s an old truck.”