hat day is it?" asks my father-in-law. He is sitting next to my husband in the front seat of the car. A purple Plymouth Neon we got saddled with when the car rental agent screwed up our reservation. My daughter loves the color. It’s cool, she says.

"What day do you want it to be?" My husband’s voice is hoarse, soft. He glances at his father, cracks a smiles. Tries not to make the question sound like cross-examination. This is something he’s good at, asking people questions.

"What day is it?" asks my father-in-law again. He scratches his head.

My husband is relentless. "What day do you want it to be?" If he were in court, he would finger his moustache, approach the witness, begin asking questions in a tone more suited to conversation than confrontation. Make the witness your enemy, he says, and you lose. Instead he nudges, coaxes, breaks down witnesses with his charm and finesse. Seduces juries with his voice. His approach with Norman, calculated as it seems, is based less on strategy than gut instinct. He thinks that joking holds the key to Norman’s memory. Without his newspaper in front of him, Norman does not know what day it is. And Kevin, my husband, the son of Norman, is using the mind game he knows best to bring him back.

Norman finally explodes. "Will you stop with the kibitzing already!"

Kevin lets out a laugh. A warm, from-the-heart laugh. "You don’t like when the shoe’s on the other foot, do you?"

"Whaddaya talking about?" Norman shakes his head, the way he always does when he’s trying to remember something. His neck, shrunken into the back of his shirt, makes me think of the bark of a withered tree. He turns to look out the window. The desert landscape offers him nothing to fix on. He continues to stare, as if hoping that somewhere, in the flatness of the road, an image, kicked up like desert dust, will surface to jar him. It might be the image of a woman bending to take something from the oven or of a boy sitting at a piano trying to play. The food I got in the army looked more appetizing than that, he might say to the woman. Or, to the boy: Do you know how to play ‘Far Far Away’?

Norman sees nothing but dusty roads and cactus, turns to look at his son, hears a voice. You don’t like when the shoe’s on the other foot, do you?

"It’s September 9, Grandpa," blurts out my daughter. "Friday." She is not a child who likes guessing games, or surprises.

"So how come you’re not in school?" asks Norman.

"We’re on a mini-vacation in Las Vegas," Lucy explains. She looks at me, smiles. "A long weekend. My parents let me take off from school." Her smile, a sliver of joy at going someplace no other third grader she knows has gone, also exudes pride: she knows she is her grandfather’s ally.

"Vegas?" says Norman. "We’re in Vegas?" He looks at Kevin, for confirmation. Looks ahead, at the now inviting landscape. His face lights up. He knows what lays ahead, beyond the mountains.

"I once had a friend," Norman starts to sing. "To my friend I did lend. . ."

"I lost my money," Lucy joins in. "And I lost my friend."

Kevin cranes his neck, to look at Lucy through the rearview mirror. His eyes, shaded by the gray tint of his sunglasses, reflect the satisfaction he feels at what he has set in motion. Norman and Lucy start to sing another song he has taught her, and another. Kibitzer, I think, recalling a younger, stronger Norman teasing me about my marriage to his son. You must have been desperate, he said. With a broad smile.

We pull up to our hotel, which is shaped like a giant pyramid. A bellhop helps Norman out of the car. Lucy jumps out to follow him. Norman asks the bellhop if we have to ride a camel to our room. Lucy laughs, Kevin directs the bellhop to our luggage, squeezes my hand. I did not want to take this trip, he did. And here we are. My father needs this, he said. And I need you. That same night he told me that the word kibitzer is colloquial German for keibitz, a noisy bird. And kiebitzen, he said, means to look over the shoulder of a card player.

"I came that close —" Norman holds the thumb and forefinger of his right hand an inch apart — "to walking out of Caesar’s Palace with ten grand in my pocket." Kevin rolls his eyes. "I was at the craps table and I was hot — I mean HOT. I’d pick up the dice, shake ’em in my hand, blow on my fingers, and shoot. I’m telling you, it was like these dice had a piece of my soul in them and couldn’t let me down." Norman shakes his head, lifts the fork from his plate, takes a piece of steak into his mouth. Chews. Behind him, statues begin to move, talk. Bacchus, Apollo and Venus come to life in the atrium of Caesar’s Palace, where we are having dinner. Lucy asks me if the real Roman Forum had Planet Hollywood, Victoria’s Secret and Gucci. She is mesmerized.

"Look Mama!" She points to the statues, looks up at a sky blue dome. Faux clouds, drifting slowly, soon fade into a nightscape of constellations. Let the laser show begin.

"But as always," continues Norman, "I went for the long shot." His eyes, watery blue, brim with resignation. "The rest is history."

Kevin looks Norman squarely in the eyes. "Dad," he says, "you never even came close to winning ten grand. I had to drag you away from the table when you were ahead by one grand." I knew the story well. Norman had already blown the five grand he had gotten from an automobile accident settlement.

Norman flings his hand, as though swatting a fly. "You don’t know what you’re talking about." "I was there, Dad. Remember? We came for the Ali-Holmes fight. You and me and Uncle Jed and his friend Louie. We hit some card tables. I played slot machines. You played craps. You won a little. And you lost a lot."

Lucy, fortunately, is too enthralled with the light show to listen to stories about losses.

Norman gets up from his seat. His pants, herringbone, slip from his waist. He pulls them up. "I need the bathroom." Kevin gets up, to go with him. Norman, insisting on going himself, winds his way through a maze of tables. Nearly knocks a woman in the head with his elbow. As he heads through the doorway leading to the interior of the restaurant, his image dissolves into a gray polyester jacket that seems to billow, like a life preserver.

Norman is gone fifteen minutes when Kevin begins to worry. He leaves Lucy and me to go after his father. Finds him sitting at the restaurant bar talking to a woman.

When they return to the table, Norman is angry that Kevin has pulled him away from the "doll" he picked up at the bar. "She gave me her room number," he says proudly. "Told me to call her. She’s staying at MGM Grand." He smiles, lifts his chin in a way that makes him appear younger, bolder. "What a doll."

The "doll" walks past us in the atrium. Norman winks at her, tells us her name is Liz. She has bright red teased hair, is wearing iridescent blue eye shadow and pink lipstick. The hemline of her dress, a tight-fitting navy blue knit with a matching blue and white jacket, shows years of wear, of being tugged, pulled down, kept from creeping too high over her knees. She looks about sixty-five, maybe seventy. I want to take a washcloth to her face, thick with powder, the way my mother did to me when I was fifteen.

"Boy, do I miss your mother," says Norman when Liz is out of view. "She loved Vegas." Kevin has heard otherwise. Ella would tell him how she hated the days spent waiting for Norman to leave the gaming tables. Norman would give her money for a massage, a manicure, a pedicure. He would tell her to have a drink by the pool, he’d join her soon. The year Kevin took Norman to see the fight she was relieved. I get a reprieve this year, she said to Kevin.

"She really loved the shows," Norman continues. Sinatra, Streisand —"

"Elvis," interjects Lucy. Norman nods. "Elvis, too," he says, not really listening. He is thinking about Ella, his wife, and their weekends in Las Vegas. "You know what she liked most, though?" He licks his lips. "She loved hotel rooms. I tell you — she was like a different woman in a hotel room. They made her feel sexy —"

Lucy’s attention drifts from the laser show to her grandfather. Her eyes, soft gray, are impassioned, curious. The grandmother she knew was silver-white, with thin pursed lips and a high-pitched laugh. Kevin tries to divert his father’s train of thought. "Dad," he says, subtly shifting his eyes toward Lucy.

Norman screws up his face. "Whaddaya think— this kid doesn’t know about sex? I don’t want to burst your bubble or anything like that, but kids today know all about sex by the time they’re in first grade. I read a story about it in the papers."

Kevin begins to squirm in his seat. "That’s not the point." He does not want to know more than he already does about his parents’ sex life.

I look at my watch. The dog show Lucy and I have planned to see begins in a half-hour. I take Lucy by the hand, lead her away from her father and grandfather, thankful that, in this city where the cycles of the sun and the moon are irrelevant, time has played right into my hands.

"You should have seen the look on his face," says Kevin. "He was like a kid in a toy store — didn’t know where to begin. ‘Maybe I’ll play some blackjack,’ he said, ‘to warm up a little.’"

Kevin puts his hand on my knee, which is resting on his leg. We are alone, on a wine-and-black striped couch, in a room with hieroglyphics etched into the furniture and stenciled along the molding on the walls. A room with a large angled window that looks out at the flickering lights of the Hacienda Motel. The sky beyond the Hacienda has the density of a blackout curtain hiding the mountains that surround the city.

"He won fifty dollars," continues Kevin, "which he thought would be better ‘invested’ playing craps. Got a seven on his first throw. His face positively lit up. Ended up winning three hundred dollars before we left the table. Then he wanted a drink — he hasn’t gone near liquor in years — so we went to the bar, where he ordered a scotch. Before long he was talking about people he hasn’t talked about in years. Mostly cronies from his card-playing days." Kevin bends forward to kiss my knee. "The important thing is that he wasn’t talking about them as if he saw them yesterday. His sense of time passing was as keen as yours or mine. No delusions. ‘People die,’ he said. ‘And you miss them, of course. But soon enough the mind starts taking you back, starts to snap pictures—of people and places —kind of like a camera. Suddenly I’ll see myself in a smoky corner of Gus’s bar drinking a scotch and playing poker with Petey and Charlie and Jimmy. Or I’ll see your mother lying in a chaise next to the lake in Ellenville where you’re swimming with your friends.’"

Kevin leans his head against the back of the couch, closes his eyes. I know, from the rise and fall of his Adam’s apple, that he is swallowing tears, thinking about his mother, hit by a bus two years ago when she was crossing the street. Her death, so sudden and so freakish, gave Lucy nightmares. To this day, when we’re walking in the city, she clutches my hand at the sight of a bus approaching.

I move closer to Kevin, nuzzle my head in his neck. In the adjoining room Lucy and Norman are together, watching TV, co-conspirators in a scheme that has pushed Kevin from the room he was to share with his father and Lucy from the room she was to share with me. Soon they will shut off the TV, Norman will tell bedtime jokes, Lucy will giggle, then go to sleep to a backdrop of Norman’s snoring. I hope you and Daddy have sex tonight, she said before kissing me good night.

Kevin lets out a deep sigh. "What if the doctors have it totally wrong?" The doctors say Norman can no longer live by himself. The brain gets old, they say. It atrophies. Dementia sets in. Memory goes. The body forgets what it has to do. The barbecued chicken, wrapped in paper, put in the toaster oven that way, was only the beginning. A warning signal. Lucky for Norman the housekeeper came that day, saw the toaster oven smoking, prevented a fire. A month later the housekeeper called Kevin to hurry over and take Norman to the hospital. How does a person forget to eat? asks Kevin when we are at the hospital and the doctors tell us Norman is suffering from dehydration. He is convinced that his father had the flu or some other bug. The body has memory too, the doctors tell him.

Kevin argues with the doctors, reminds them of studies showing how physical stimulation helps not only the body, but the mind too. He knows Norman cannot live with us, refuses to think of any alternative. Except this one. He will take his father to Las Vegas, the place he loved more than anyplace on earth. The place that bombards the senses every which way you turn, every hour of the day. The clattering of coins. The incoherent murmur of voices. Music. Bright lights flickering. If the body has memory, Kevin reasons, this is the place to bring it back.

A smile, simmering with restraint, crosses Kevin’s lips. He puts his hand on the back of my neck, begins to play with my hair. "Norman grabbed a waitress," he tells me. "Tried to pull her onto his lap." Kevin sees this as a sign of life in his father, accuses me of having no sense of humor when I berate him for not making Norman apologize to the waitress.

The phone rings.

Lucy giggles. "Is this room service?" Kevin plays along, asks what she would like. "An ice cream sundae," she says. "And a plate of cold shrimp." Pronto, she insists. She loves going on trips, spending nights in hotels, calling up for room service. She has her own blue vinyl suitcase, a gift from Kevin’s mother. When she grows up, she plans to be an archeologist, travel all around the world digging up bones, comparing hotels. Already a collector, she has notepads and stationery from every hotel she’s stayed at.

Kevin can hear Norman snoring in the background, tells Lucy to poke him gently so he’ll turn over. "I can’t," she insists. Kevin offers to switch rooms with her, or at least get Norman off his back, a solution she nixes. She relishes the feeling of independence, illusory as it is, and besides, she tells Kevin, she would not be able to sleep anyway. Las Vegas is in her blood, she says, proclaiming how unfair it is that children can’t play the slot machines. Rattling off names that caught her eye as we walked through the casino — Double Diamond, Pyramid Gold, Treasures of Tutankhamun. Describing in detail, once again, how her heart was pounding when she was asked to come down from her seat into the arena to mingle with Hooper’s Sooper Dogs. They picked me from the audience to throw the frisbee, she exclaims. Me! Keen observer that she is, she tells him the color and size of every dog in the show — Toby was the medium-size brown and white one who kept running in the wrong direction, Tinkerbell was the small black one who leaped three feet into the air to catch the frisbee — and is equally deliberate in the details she chooses to omit. The heckler, the man sitting one row down and to the left of us, the man Lucy said reminded her of Dennis, Kevin’s lifelong friend, has been relegated to a faint image in her mind, a pencil erasure camouflaged by pictures of dogs doing tricks. Lucy cannot tell Kevin about the heckler without alluding to Dennis, who carried himself with the same emaciated despair before he died. It was the heckler’s eyes, shadowed, hollow in their sockets, that made her think of Dennis most.

Lucy exhausts herself talking, says good night "for the final time." Hangs up. A silence, expectant, like falling snow, hovers in the room. Kevin pulls down the strap of my camisole, kisses my shoulder. Through half-closed eyes I see the flickering lights of the Hacienda Motel. Kevin’s lips brush against my neck, tickle my ear. My heartbeat quickens, the snow turns to stars that rain on me, like coins falling from a slot machine.

"What are you in for?" Norman asks the man who sits down next to him. This afternoon Norman is at the roulette table and I am keeping him company while Lucy and Kevin go off to see white tigers and dolphins. In the desert. I feel inconsequential here (though Norman calls me his lucky charm after hitting three winning numbers) and my mind drifts. I see Ella, trying to relax in a chaise by the pool, drinking in the sun, martinis maybe, or margaritas. Anything that carries her through the illusion of waiting.

Norman does not get an answer, asks his question again. "You look a little thin," he adds. I bring my attention back to the table, to Norman and the man he is addressing. His arms hang like the limbs of a thirsty plant and his cheekbones, dispirited, betray the handsome face he once had. It is a face I recognize immediately. The face of the heckler.

"I have a blood disorder." He looks Norman right in the eyes, waits for a response. I watch his jaw tighten.

"You’re in the right place," Norman tells him. "The doctors here are so-so, but the nurses are the best — a particularly good-looking bunch, I might add. And the food’s quite edible."

Norman’s confusion alarms me. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. My instinct is to apologize for my father-in-law’s behavior, escort him from the table. The roulette wheel spins. I decide to wait.

Norman wins, lets out a howl of joy. Puts down two hundred dollars.

The man next to him, his hand shaking, puts down fifty. "What are you in for?" he asks Norman.

Norman leans over, puts his arm around the man’s shoulder, asks his name. "A little rest, Jay," he whispers. "My son is a prominent lawyer — and a rich one. He worries too much about me."

I tap Norman on the shoulder, tell him I think it’s time to go.

"Relax," he says. "Go get yourself a massage." He hands me a fifty-dollar bill, winks at Jay, his newfound friend. Right now I want to kill my husband for putting me in this position.

Norman wins a few more rounds of roulette, loses a few, decides he wants to have a cup of coffee. With Jay. I have no intention of leaving him alone with a total stranger. Norman acquiesces to my joining them, leads us to the coffee shop overlooking the casino, the one that plays music from the fifties. We sit at an overcushioned red vinyl booth. A waitress with Cleopatra eyes takes our order. Norman winks at her, asks what time she gets off from work. He has forgotten all about his allusion to being in a hospital, tells Jay this is the seventeenth time he’s been to Las Vegas. "Brought my wife here for the first time in 1963," he explains, "to celebrate our fifteenth anniversary. We came almost every year after that, for fifteen years." He shakes his head, mumbles. "Seems like yesterday."

"How many times you been here?" he asks Jay.

"This is my third time." Jay lifts his coffee cup to his lips. His hand shakes, the way Dennis’s did, and he has the same unmistakable shadowiness settling around his eyes like soft charcoal. Painfully thin, overmedicated, he carries himself like someone walking along the edge of a precipice.

"First time was for a short order cook’s convention," he continues. "I won the ‘eggs-over-easy’ contest." I let out a laugh. Quickly apologize.

"It’s okay," Jay reassures me. "No one takes short order cooks seriously. Why should you be any different?"

Norman wants to know more about Jay’s other times in Las Vegas. I want to know more about short order cooking.

"Second time here was with a lover." Jay puts his fist to his mouth. Coughs. His use of the word lover strikes me as clandestine, veiled. Norman doesn’t even have a clue.

"This is definitely the place to come with a girlfriend," he agrees. "Or a wife." He glances my way.

Jay looks past me, in the direction of the casino. There is an oiliness to his complexion, his hair, that disturbs me. This is not the grease of a short order cook that he exudes. This is the unrelenting sweat of someone fighting for his life. "Six months ago," he says, looking past me, "I got sick. Lost my job." He needs some very expensive medication, he explains. That’s why he’s here.

"If you gotta make a killing, this is the place." Norman slams his hand on the table, excuses himself to go to the bathroom.

While he is gone I learn that Jay was a short order cook at a diner in Seattle. "It’s a city diner with a small-town feel to it," he tells me. "Not a big flashy neon one." He grew up outside of Seattle, where his family had a luncheonette. He’s been flipping pancakes since he was twelve. He pulls out his wallet, to show me a photograph. Two men, their arms around one another, are standing in front of a docked boat. He points to the man on the right. "That’s me when I was healthy."

I look at my watch. Ten minutes have passed and Norman has not returned. Jay offers to go to the bathroom to see if he’s all right. I go with him, wait outside the men’s room, feeling frantic. Norman is not there. Trying to find him in the labyrinth of slot machines, card tables, roulette tables, dizzying carpets, blinking lights is almost an impossibility. Jay and I go in different directions. We comb the casino, meet up again at the coffee shop. Norman is nowhere to be found. I thank Jay for his help, go to Security. People lose each other all the time in Las Vegas, I’m told by a man in a crisp blue cotton shirt. He doesn’t understand how worried I am, finds it amusing that I lost my slightly forgetful father-in-law, suggests I go to my room and wait there. He’ll put in a report, he says with reluctance after I give him a description of Norman.

I go upstairs, check both rooms. They are freshly cleaned, empty. I pace, listen for footsteps, hear the wind tunnel of the elevator, better known as the ‘inclinator’ in this angled hotel. I begin to feel like a pharaoh locked in a chamber of a pyramid, decide to leave the room, go downstairs where I meander aimlessly through the open spaces of the hotel. Everything feels surreal. I turn one way to see a false Manhattan skyline, another way to see a sign for King Tut’s Tomb. Make my way past the Theatre of Time into the Virtual Reality Arcade. Head over to a bar, for a drink. A margarita, with a double shot of tequila. Finally I go back to our room. To wait. How, I wonder, am I going to tell my husband that I lost his father?

"You what?" exclaims Kevin. He rubs his cheek, drops the toy dolphin he has bought for Lucy on the couch. "This is great— just great." He goes to the phone, calls Security, insists on an all-out search for his father. The security officer suggests he call the police, in case his father headed over to another hotel. It has not occurred to Kevin, usually so clear-headed, that his father might have even tried to get around Las Vegas on his own. From the look on his face I can tell he is now terrified.

"Maybe he went to MGM Grand," says Lucy, the voice of reason, "to find that lady — the doll." Immediately we are out the door, in a taxi. No one says a word — not even Lucy, who I know wants to tell me all about frolicking dolphins and awe-inspiring tigers — for the few minutes it takes us to get across the Strip. We enter the hotel and Lucy’s mouth drops. A statue of Dorothy, life-like, linking arms with the Tin Man, the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion, stands before a backdrop of Emerald City. Toto is at her feet. Lucy wants a picture. "Later," I tell her.

We walk past a yellow brick road, toward the hotel lobby, where we find Norman sitting on a couch. Waiting. Lucy runs up to him, gives him a hug. Kevin, relieved to have tracked him down so easily, hesitates before admonishing him for disappearing on us.

"Whaddaya talking about?" Norman insists he told me where he was going. He had a date with Liz, he says, and cannot figure out why she gave him a phony name — unless, of course, she’s a hooker. He is sure she’s staying at this hotel, is determined to wait here until she shows up.

"Why don’t we go shoot some craps?" suggests Kevin. He does not want to agitate Norman. "We can always come back." Norman shakes his head. He wants to wait. Kevin does not know what to do. Like a heavenly messenger, Jay walks by. Norman’s eyes light up. He calls him over.

"I see you found him." Jay smiles at me. I introduce him to Kevin and Lucy. Kevin nods, cautiously, and Lucy, recognizing Jay as last night’s heckler, inches closer to Kevin. She needs protection as she sizes him up, tries to figure out how a man who was needlessly trying to distract dogs from doing their tricks, has become her mother’s ally and her grandfather’s friend.

Jay is tired, says he’s going to take a nap, hopes he’ll bump into us later. Norman, desperately wanting to escape the reminder of why he is in Las Vegas with his son, daughter-in-law and grandchild, convinces Jay to skip his nap, try another roulette table with him, shoot craps, maybe even hit some slot machines. He spits into his palms, rubs them together, pleads with Kevin to let him off the leash. Just for a while. Kevin, mistrustful of strangers, afraid of another disappearing act, reluctantly gives in. Restraint has its repercussions, he reasons as we leave Norman and Jay, the kibitzer and the heckler, in the casino.

Lucy is not happy with our decision. "That man has AIDS," she says to Kevin, who simply nods, asks me everything I know about Jay. I tell him about short order cooking, Lucy tells him about last night. She is angry with Kevin for letting Norman go off with the man who heckled dogs. She is angry with Jay for making her think of Dennis, ninety pounds the last time she saw him, and the reminder he was that best friends can die too soon. And she is angry with me for making excuses for Jay: he was drunk, he’s sick, give the guy a break. "Maybe he’ll get lucky here," Kevin says to her as she poses with me in front of Dorothy and friends for a picture.

Lucy wants to go on some rides at MGM Grand Adventures. As we head toward the entrance to the theme park we hear a commotion coming from the casino. Someone has hit the jackpot on a slot machine. A familiar voice rings out.

"It was my quarter! I gave you the goddamn quarter!"

We follow Norman’s voice. Jay is standing next to him, a bucket filled with coins. Two security guards surround them. Jay looks my way, lowers his eyes. Norman lunges at him. "You bastard!" The guards move Lucy and me along. Children are allowed to pass through the casino, to go from one end to the other, to be stimulated by the lights, the sound, the movement. But they are not allowed to stop.

It is Kevin’s job to calm Norman down, pull him away. "I’m not leaving here till this son-of-a-bitch gives me at least half of the pot." From the balcony that surrounds the casino Lucy and I can see everything. I’m not sure if it’s a good idea to let her watch. But I cannot leave. Norman looks at Kevin, asks him to do something. "Tell him you’re a lawyer," he pleads. "Tell him you’ll sue the crap out of him."

Kevin says nothing as the guards escort Jay away. Feels a wrenching, like a knife in his gut, as his father drops to his knees, melts into the carpet. He lifts Norman, leads him out of the casino. "Look Mama," says Lucy as we approach Emerald City. She points to the ceiling, to the image of a witch on a broomstick. The image, laser-produced, dissolves into two words: Surrender Dorothy.

"What day is it?" asks Norman.

"May 25," answers Kevin. "Your birthday."

Lucy kisses him, hands him a present, a poker set in a handsome leather case. It’s what he wanted. All around us are women and men, elderly, many with walkers. They sit in chairs along the perimeter of Westwood Home for the Aged’s large carpeted lobby, or on the patio overlooking the ocean. Waiting.

We are not there fifteen minutes when Norman asks Kevin, as he always does, how the lawsuit is coming along. And Kevin tells Norman, as he always does, that there is no lawsuit, they don’t have a leg to stand on. It is his word against Jay’s. What he does not tell Norman is that he did some investigating, found out Jay was in the habit of borrowing money from strangers, and that, in truth, he might be able to make a case for splitting the pot. But he wants no part of it.

"We’re taking you out today," says Kevin. "For your birthday."

Norman does not want to go. He points to a table in a room just off the lobby, where three men are sitting. "They’re waiting," he says. "Can’t get a game going without me." In just six months Norman has become the card shark of Westwood.

Lucy pleads with Norman to let us take him to a restaurant. "Another time," he says. "This is gonna be a big game." He kisses Lucy, gets up from his chair, hugs Kevin. Thanks us for the present. Kisses me. Winks. "You must have been desperate," he says.

© Deborah Batterman