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"Whenever so at the stamps," he said, "I’ll be in the room with him"

"Today’s Sunday, so Monday Tuesday Wednesday, and then you’d fly back on Thursday"

He nodded He’d booked his flight as soon as he’d confirmed the appointments with the three dealers

"Well, isn’t it a nuisance having to drive back and forth each day? Not to uest-rooet in a et more rest without the traffic noise, too You could stay here tonight, as late as it is, and tos and check out of your room Doesn’t that make sense?"

Thirty-Nine

Keller, back at La Quinta, heard the phone ring once as he e a second time, he reached for a towel and dried off, then found his cell phone on the dresser It was turned off, so he turned it on to find out who’d called There weren’t any calls, and even if there had been, how could he have heard the ring if the phone was turned off?

He picked up the roo the front desk, where a s to do infor up and worked on the puzzle for a moment before he remembered he had another phone, the one he used only for conversations with Dot

But that phone often went unused for weeks on end, and he kept it turned off unless he was expecting a call or had one to make Where was it, anyway?

He couldn’t seem to find it, and decided that was ridiculous, because he kneas here, in this s?

If it rang once, it could ring again, and couldn’t he make that happen? All he had to do was use his other phone to call his own number

But he couldn’t do that, he realized when he had his regular phone in hand, his thumb poised over the numbers Because, of course, he didn’t know his own number, and had never added it to his speed dial Why would he? He never had occasion to call it hiive it out to others Only Dot used it, and only for calls that had to be kept private

So much for that shortcut He had a phone he couldn’t locate, and it was so ring All he could do was keep looking for it, knowing it was there, drawing precious little joy fro

It rang

And, of course, there it was on the desk, invisible beneath a complimentary copy of Cheyenne This Week, which he’d picked up and paged through and tossed aside earlier Evidently he’d tossed it right on top of his phone, but it had landed in such a way that it looked to be lying flat, an illusion that the ringtone instantly dispelled

"Hello," he said

"Well, hello yourself," Dot said "Are you all right? You sound as though you just ran up three flights of stairs"

"I’m fine"

"Whatever you say, Pablo"

Pablo?

"You’re still there, right? Counting sta"

"Not even your blessings? Well, whatever you do with stamps I don’t suppose you lick them, but then neither does anybody else these days, not since the Post Office switched from lick-and-stick to whatever they call the new ones"

"Self-adhesive"

"Catchy When’s the last time you actually licked a stamp, Pablo?"

He did so whenever he had a letter to e "It’s been a while," he said, "but why are you callingyou by name"

"Oh"

"It’s reflexive," she said "I have this habit of calling you by na your name the way other people use commas Not your new name The old one, the one that’s one silly little voay frouess there’s nobody who calls you that anymore, is there?"

Julia did, sometimes She’d known him before he’d picked the name Nicholas Edwards off a child’s tombstone, and like everyone else she’d called him by his last name, Keller She never slipped and called him Keller in front of other people, and he didn’t think Jenny had ever heard the na love, or when she was in the ain