"Don't," Ellen said. "I like the mountain on you."
He left through the lobby doors into air that still carried snow in it, and Ellen climbed the stairs one careful step at a time, the pole clicking, her suitcase waiting behind a door like a verdict.
In the room she sat on the bed—quilted, impersonal, smelling of detergent—and called Marcus from the room phone, collect, because Horizon still accepted collect from the field as a matter of stubborn principle. The operator's voice was Christmas-tired. Marcus answered on the second ring, his own voice warm and worn, the sound of a man who had spent the morning editing other people's endings.