Wade helped me shift the wooden crates to make space for my briefcase and winter coat.

I stood in the still dark by the back bumper, looking down at the cardboard boxes piled high in the trunk of my Buick.

Wade shut the trunk of my Buick LeSabre and took me up the rear wooden stairs of his apartment building on Maple Street.

We sat at his little Formica kitchen table beneath the humming yellow bulb of a ceiling fixture.

Outside, the gray light of early morning seeped through the narrow blinds.