"Never mind. I should have seen it and straddled it," he said. "Is this the car we're taking away?" He said this as if it were among the worst he'd hauled off for a long time.

"Poor old car," Jane said. "It's gotten me through becoming a widow, driving the car pools for a hundred years, hauling birdseed, groceries, and assorted misbehaving children. I'm afraid of what its fate will be. It's served me well."

The tow truck driver looked at her as if she were slightly mad.

Shelley, having heard the noise, came to her kitchen door in her jeans with an apron over a T-shirt. She looked out for a second, then disappeared.

By the time the station wagon was gone, Shelley had reappeared looking as if she'd just come

from a beauty shop and stopped off at a very expensive dress shop.

"Why are you dressed so well?" Jane asked. "Because this is what I wore last night to one of Paul's dinners for his employees. It was the clos-

est thing at hand. Where's your car going? What's wrong with it now?"

"Nearly everything's wrong with it. I'm donating it to a charity"

"What? Somebody wants that car?"

Jane felt herself very nearly tearing up. "I think

they're probably having it gutted and crushed. So they can sell the metal as scrap."

"Jane, it's a vehicle. Not a person."

"I know that, Shelley. I'm also having a new

driveway put in and acquiring a new friend." "A new friend?"

'A Jeep. You're too dressed up to go with me. Change your clothes to 'business casual' as they're calling it in the ads on television. We have an appointment to buy the car this afternoon at

two-thirty. Would you drive me? I have no wheels of my own."