26. Yet long before he knew her, when he was a child, his parents had driven him along this unchanging county road thousands of times and it had always been there, the blue name. Now as he passed under it, a second sign came into view, above an entrance: Tan & Do, in cursive white neon. A salon. He would get a trim and ask the hairdresser if she knew something about the sign. The woman at the desk accommodated him after a short wait with the magazines. Afterwards, outside the Tan & Do, he edged along the building so that the blue name remained high above him and illegible. The unbroken string of questions the young hairdresser had asked, to which he had returned vague, impolite answers, he could not penetrate. The brush cut he’d insisted on, and residual ultraviolet rays from the discount tan she’d insisted on—these were, he would realize, given time, other forms of distraction.