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asked.
    "Shower won't be running by then."
    "Come over and use mine," she said.
    That startled him. It sounded like a come-on, and not for anything he thought of as romance. "No," he said, perhaps too sharply. "Thanks, but let's just make it Friday, OK?"
    "If it's Friday we'll have to make a reservation."
    "You're the one with a phone."
    "Glad to do it," she said. She led the way out into the upstairs hall, and as she preceded him down the stairs, she said, "By the way, my offer to let you use my shower—that's all it was. I'm not that kind of girl."
    "Good thing," he said, "cause I'm not that kind of guy."
    "I know," she said. As if she liked that about him. Maybe she wasn't looking for the alpha baboon after all.
    At the front door she stopped and held up a hand. "Don't walk me to my car," she said. "I'd just want you to kiss me again and we wouldn't want to give the neighbors anything to talk about."
    "Fine," he said. "See you in the morning."
    "Come by my office and we can drive to the closing together. The lawyer's on Greene Street downtown and it's hard enough to find one parking place, let alone two."
    "Eight forty-five," said Don.
    "Nice doing business with you," she said with a grin. Then she bounded down the stairs and walked across the lawn. He stood in the open doorway and watched her all the way to the car, watched as she got in, started it up, and drove away. And then just stood there a while longer in the open door.
     

6
    Lemonade
    Without a building permit or title to the house, Don had about reached the limit of work he could do. Yet he wasn't interested in sitting around the house the rest of the evening, and he had no place he wanted to go. He had long since learned that movies and books were either stupid or not. If they were stupid, it made him impatient and angry to spend time with them. If they were not, then they had the power to unlock emotions that he had no desire to face again. Work was the solution, and so work is what he did.
    If he couldn't do anything with the house, there was always the yard. This being North Carolina, anything that you mowed became a lawn, so under the deep scraggly weeds on the property there was a lawn just waiting to be uncovered. It took all his extension cords to get his Weed Eater out to the front of the property, and there was no way he'd get it all the way to the back, but anything he did would be an improvement. Maybe he should have bought a gasoline-powered machine, but he didn't like carrying flammable liquids around with him.
    The afternoon had turned hot, and he was soaked with sweat by the time he finished with the front and side yards and as much of the back yard as he could reach. He was also covered with flecks of weeds, most of which he was probably a little bit allergic to, so he itched as well. What a great job to do when you've got no shower, he thought. As he coiled up the cords and put everything away inside the house, he tried to decide whether he should go get a shower and then put on some of his dirty clothes, or go do a laundry while he was still so filthy that touching clean clothes would only get them dirty again. It was getting on toward dusk when he locked the front door and headed for the truck.
    "Hey! Hardworkin' man!"
    It was the old white woman from next door. She was standing behind their picket fence, holding a plate with a checkered cloth over it.
    "Look at this!" she said.
    Dutifully he went over to the fence and waited for her to pull away the cloth with a theatrical gesture. It was a loaf of hot fresh bread, and even though he was more thirsty than hungry, and too hot to wish for anything but cold food, there was no resisting the yeasty smell of the stuff.
    "I don't know why that smells so good to me," he said. "My mother never baked bread."
    "Jesus had to tell us not to live by bread alone because if we had our druthers we'd try," she said. "We also got stew, which I know is too hot to sound good to you right now, but you need