“My mom sounded real sincere on the phone. I think she’ll like having the company for a while.” A straight-razor wind sneaks across their blanket, shaving the plaid ripples.

“You’ll see. We’ll be all right. Maybe we can even be happy again.”

“I’m not selling it. It’s all we have left. It’s our independence.”

“You think Dakota’s warm enough? Maybe we ought to go to the car.” She moves her head under the striped canopy of the stroller, pressing her nose against the baby’s cheeks, against the perfect lips, gauging the temperature of her skin and the quality of her tiny breaths.

“If we make it to your mom’s, and we don’t have the Lincoln, we’ll be stuck out there, at her mercy. Fine for you.” He pauses and shuts his eyes for a long time. “Not so fine for me.”

Caroline pulls her head out, checks the locks on the stroller wheels, though they’re not on a hill and they're not going anywhere anyway. She looks at Howard, looks through him, the way she has always been able to do.

Howard puts his index finger into his ear, twists it a couple of times, and rests his chin on his hand again, his fingertip between his lips. His tongue rests on the bitter ear taste, and it reminds him of being a boy, of cowboy sheets, and Band-Aids, and baseball-carded spokes.

“I think we made the right decision, honey. We’ve had it with the Midwest. We’ve wrung it out. There’s nothing her for us, no work, no family. Just us three and that car and the parks and those awful shelters and now the goddamn cold.” she opens her bag, her fingers mining for the familiar feel of her leather cigarette case. She can’t find it, and asks, “You have my cigs?”

‘Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care, (about tiimmme), if so I can’t imagine why’. Howard concentrates, and the head music swells up and around the lyrics. ‘We’ve all got time enough to die’. He doesn’t want to hear about dying right now. Not with the Lincoln kerchunking when it downshifts. Not with that U-joint looking so gimpy.

“It’ll hold up,” he says. “It’s a Lincoln Premier, for Christ’s sake.”

“Howard, it’s thirty-six years old. You don’t think it’s going to last forever, do you? If we sold it, we’d have enough money to take the train down to Louisiana, with some left to tide us over until you find a job. This cold is coming on quick, and I’m really worried about Dakota.” Caroline buttons the top of her jacket and looks at her husband. “Did you take my cigs?”

“Yeah.” He finds them, covered in a fold of the blanket, and tosses the case onto Caroline’s lap.

“Besides,” she says, “we could always get another one after we get back on our feet.”

“Another what?” Howard says.

“Another car. Like that one.”

“Caroline, they only made twenty-two hundred of them, total. They’re probably only a hundred or so left in the whole frickin’ world.” He starts to hear ‘My Little Deuce Coupe’, and pinches it off.

Caroline pulls her head out, checks the locks on the stroller wheels, though they’re not on a hill and they're not going anywhere anyway.