It was still dark outside when he awoke. His book rested flat on his chest, opened to where it had fallen. It was the same scented night that he had left in the library parking lot, the same night that he had freed the desk clerk. Yet it seemed like those events were far away, distant memories separated by an infinite chasm. The silence seemed profound when he stopped outside the closed office and dropped the room key into the door slot. He struggled for a moment with the question of paying for his few hours of rest. The question took the form of a hallucination, something grotesque but laughable. He wanted to wait and let the imaginative possibilities unfold, but he was overcome with a sense of urgency to leave, to flee.
He walked, for a time, along the roadside. Several cars passed, but
