Neither my Dodge Shadow nor Aubrey’s Ford Escort was in any shape for a long drive. But if we were going to Marysville somebody had to drive. My car got the nod when we compared tire tread. I picked her up at her apartment building, a crumbling old Art Deco palace at West Tuckman and Sterling. It had been a wonderful neighborhood once. I’ve seen the old pictures: muscular oaks lining brick streets, trolley cars, big old Tudors surrounded with wrought-iron fences. Now the oaks are gone, the bricks paved over with asphalt, the trolleys replaced by boxy buses, the wrought-iron by chain-link, and the wonderful old homes chopped up into efficiency apartments for poor souls who don’t have two nickels to rub together. Aubrey was waiting outside for me, in the rain. She got in the car with soaked hair, a mug of black coffee, and cheeks as pink as bunny slippers. “Good gravy,” I scolded, “you’ll catch pneumonia.” “Pneumonia is caused by micro-organisms, not raindrops,” she said.
