"You get there all right?" Ray's voice came up out of the bayou, unhurried, frog-heavy, with a television on somewhere behind it.
"I got there."
"And?"
Tom told him. It took a long time. Ray didn't interrupt. When Tom got to the part about the coin there was a sound on the other end that might have been a laugh or might have been something else.
"Well," Ray said finally. "That's a hell of a thing."
"Yeah."
"You want a drink?"
"Yeah."
"You gonna have one?"
Tom looked at the door of room eleven. Across the parking lot, on the other side of 9D, there was a liquor store with a red neon sign, the kind of place that stayed open till eleven. He had seen it when he walked up from the station. He had seen it the way you see a dog that might bite.
"No," he said.
"Then that's today done," Ray said. "Tomorrow, you figure out if you're staying or going. Don't figure it out tonight. Nothing gets figured out right at night. Go to sleep, Thomas."
"Ray. She looked at me like I was the worst thing that ever happened to her."
"Who, the little girl?"
"No. Nora. The little girl looked at me like I was the best thing."
Ray was quiet for a moment. "And which one of those you think is true?"
"Neither one," Tom said.
"Then you're already smarter than you were in January," Ray said. "Go to sleep."