After banging on Ona’s door for ten frazzling minutes, he summoned the motel manager—same beaky kid from the night before—who unlocked the door on the mortifying sight of Ona emerging from the bathroom in a knee-length nightgown. Quinn yelped like a stepped-on cat. “What are you doing in here?” Ona wailed. “Get out!” Quinn clapped his hands over his eyes as the manager fled. “I knocked fifty million times, Ona,” he said, turning his back. “I thought . . .” He faced the open doorway, the daylight beyond, the temptation of Ona’s gassed-up car. He was done with good deeds. Ted’s theatrical “rescue” had pretty much exhausted his appetite for goodness. “Get out,” she repeated. “I don’t plan to expire for another eighteen years.” An hour later, over a wretched breakfast in the attached grease trap where they’d eaten once already, Quinn remained mute with embarrassment, sipping morosely at a cup of watery coffee as Ona polished off a three-stack of blueberry pancakes.
