Summary: As Felix unlocked his silver bike in a pool of blue street light filled with billows of mosquitoes and gnats he thought that he might as well go straight to Les Jardeen and call home from there. If Veronica wanted to join him for dinner (which he doubted) she could ride into town. Normally (whatever that meant) he preferred to shower and change before dinner but he was extremely tense and couldn’t face the scene at home. In public they would have to pretend nothing was wrong. A drink first would give him time to decompress. Anyway, the most likely outcome was that she wouldn’t join him at all. Lately she was going to bed early, another way of saying that she passed out by nine o’clock. So he mounted the bike and joined the others riding up the little hill, wooded on both sides, to Main Street, the village center.
