The woman behind the desk wore a white-collared, V-necked dress of blue-green, had a long hair and low bangs, all of a cross between sunset clouds and the outer edge of a candle flame in an otherwise dark room, and I natural somehow knew, and her eyes behind glasses I didn't think she needed were as blue as Lake Erie at three o'clock on a cloudless summer afternoon; and the color of her compressed smile matched her hair.