I had turned it into an office. The room behind it was a small windowed office, which I had turned into a living space. I had fixed it up to my satisfaction. The clothes I had brought with me from Chicago would hold out for another year or two. I had a narrow bed, an old dresser, a small closet, a television set-with a VCR picked up at a nearby pawnshop-and a low bookcase, which stood next to the dresser and was overflowing with paperbacks and videotapes. To get to the bathroom, which had no bath, I had to walk outside past five offices, accepting whatever the weather had to offer. I showered at the downtown YMCA every morning after I worked out there. Normally, I bicycle to the Y. My bike was standing in the corner behind my new client.

There was nothing but my name printed on the white-on-black plastic plate that slid into the slot on my outer door. The plate didn’t indicate what service I provided.

“Man at the Dairy Queen,” she said, nodding at the door, beyond which was the concrete landing overlooking the Dairy Queen on Route 301, which was also Washington Street, though in my two years in town I never heard anyone call it anything but 301. They also called Bahia Vista “Baya Vista,” and Honore Avenue. was usually referred to as Honor Avenue.

“He said you had feelings.”

She looked at me for about the third time and saw a sad-looking forty-two-year-old man with rapidly thinning hair and reasonable dark looks wearing a short-sleeved button-down blue shirt and gray jeans.

“You’re a detective, like on television,” she said. “Rockford.”

“More like Harry Orwell,” I said. “I’m not a detective. The only license I have in this state is a card with my picture on it that says I’m a process server. But any citizen can make inquiries. That’s what I do. I make inquiries.”

“You ask questions.”

“I ask questions.”