Smoke

That was the other thing about New Yorkers: they kept saying things that made no sense. Ignoring that remark, Mrs. Krutchfield said, 'We've named all our rooms after Revolutionary War figures, so much nicer than numbers, I think. General Burgoyne, and Betsy Ross, and Thomas Jefferson—'

'The usual suspects.'

Mrs. Krutchfield got that one. 'Yes,' she said, miffed. But she couldn't help going on with her patter. 'All except the colonel, of course, we wouldn't name a room after him.'

So it is possible to attract the attention of a New York snip. The girl said, 'The colonel?'

'Colonel Hesketh Pardigrass,' Mrs. Krutchfield explained, and looked over her shoulder before lowering her voice to add, 'the one who was slain in this very house in 1778. It was because of a woman. He's the ghost.'

'Ah,' the young woman said. 'Haunted house equals ghost equals your colonel.'

'Well, yes.' It was so hard to be civil to New Yorkers, but Mrs. Krutchfield would not give up. 'You can read all about him in your room,' she confided. 'I wrote up his history and made copies, so there's one in every room. You're welcome to take it with you if you like.' She didn't add, but might have, most of the decent people do. Particularly the Japanese.

'Thank you,' the girl said, noncommittal; she wouldn't take the colonel's history with her, you could tell. And now she hefted the drum-and-key once more, and said, 'Are they alphabetical?'

Mrs. Krutchfield went blank. 'Are what alphabetical?'

'The rooms. I was wondering how to find General Burgoyne.'

'Oh, well, I'll give you directions,' Mrs. Krutchfield offered. Alphabetical? she wondered. What did the girl mean, alphabetical? 'You just drive your vehicle around to the back,' she said, 'and park anywhere. You'll see the outside staircase, just go up and in the door there, and it's the first door on the right. You'll have lovely views of the Catskills.'

'Oh, good.'

'And you'll be staying just the one night?' This customer was a bit unusual, at that; a lone young woman on a Wednesday in June, arriving at almost six in the evening, for one night only.

Which the girl confirmed. 'Yes. We're up looking for a house to rent for the summer, but we didn't find anything today.'

Mrs. Krutchfield frowned past the girl toward her van parked on the circular drive. 'We? I thought you were alone.'

'Oh, I am. My, uh, my friends had to drive back to the city tonight, because of their cats.'

Oh, yes, New Yorkers also have cats. Some had even been known to ask if they could keep their smelly cats in the actual rooms at The Sewing Kit, to which the invariable response was a gentle but firm no.

The girl said, 'You wouldn't know any houses for rent, would you?'

'I'm afraid not, no.'

'Well, we'll look some more tomorrow. Thank you.'

Mrs. Krutchfield was at heart a good woman, which is why she said, 'There's a television set in the parlor, some guests like to watch in the evening,' even though New Yorkers never want to watch the same programs as everybody else.

'Thanks.' The girl turned away, paused, seemed to think about something, and turned back with her brow all furrowed. 'Your ghost,' she said. 'You say there's a write-up about him in the room?'

'Yes, every room. You're welcome to take it with you, if you like.'

'Yes, you said that.' The girl seemed obscurely troubled, and even sighed a little. 'Well, we can only hope for the best,' she commented, as though to herself, and left Mrs. Krutchfield steaming in a stew of irritation and bewilderment.

New Yorkers!

There was only one empty room at The Sewing Kit tonight, Nathan Hale, the one Mrs. Krutchfield always rented last because it was downstairs in back, too near the kitchen and the TV, and with no view at all to speak of, unless you like extreme close-ups of pine trees. But it was a nice group tonight, a nice mix, with some Germans in Betsy Ross, making marks on maps, and a family of Canadians in Ben Franklin washing their clothing in the sink — they'd particularly asked for a room with a sink, since The Sewing Kit did not offer private baths, but only communal bathrooms shared by two or three guest rooms — and in other rooms were several groups of mid-westerners, whom Mrs. Krutchfield had always found to be the very nicest of Americans, if somehow not all that stimulating. And of course the retired couple from Detroit — 'Motor City!' they kept calling it, with the exclamation point solidly present in a silvery saliva spray — were still here, and still had more of their postcard collection from all over the 'Lower Forty-eight' — as they called America — to show to their innkeeper or the other guests or anyone else who didn't move fast enough.

And of course there was the New Yorker in General Burgoyne.

Somehow, not entirely sure why, Mrs. Krutchfield found herself hoping the Motor City! couple and the girl from Brooklyn never crossed paths.

The Sewing Kit did not serve lunch or dinner, offering instead a typed-up list of suggestions of fine restaurant experiences to be had in the general Rhinebeck-Red Hook area. Mrs. Krutchfield did serve a breakfast of which she was proud, enough baked and fried food to pin any traveler to the seat of his or her car for hours after departure from The Sewing Kit, but the other meals she prepared only for herself, in her private quarters off in the left front wing of the sprawling structure, from which she could watch the main entrance and the circular drive for late arrivals or unexpected departures.

Usually, after dinner, Mrs. Krutchfield would join in the side parlor any of her guests who might like to watch TV. She herself was always in bed by ten, but she didn't mind if the guests continued to enjoy television by themselves, so long as they kept the volume down and turned the box off no later than the end of Jay Leno at 12:30. (New Yorkers always wanted to watch David Letterman.)

This evening the parlor was comfortably full, mostly with midwesterners, plus the Canadians (who smelled of Ivory Liquid), all spread out on both sofas, the three padded armchairs, and even the two wooden chairs. The girl from Brooklyn came in a little later than everyone else, looked around, smiled, said, 'That's okay,' waved the midwestern gentlemen back into their seats, and settled cross-legged on the floor in front of the sofas more gracefully and athletically than a city girl should be able to do.

Mrs. Krutchfield was justifiably proud of the big black gridwork dish out behind The Sewing Kit, bringing in television signals from all over outer space, but the truth was, she didn't make much use of its potential, limiting herself almost exclusively to the three networks, except when it so happened that one of the guests knew of a particular old movie afloat on some obscure brooklet crossing the heavens, and asked if they might tune in: a Martin and Lewis comedy, perhaps, or Johnny Belinda, or Fail- Safe.

There was nobody like that tonight, though, so they contented themselves with sitcoms. Mrs. Krutchfield sat in her usual place, the comfortable armchair directly opposite the TV. On the maple end table beside her lay the remote control, atop the satellite weekly listings open to tonight's schedule. (It was better not to let any of the male guests near the remote control.) And so another evening began at The Sewing Kit.

At first, everything was normal and serene. Then, at just about four minutes past nine, as everybody was contentedly settling in to watch a program broadcast from some parallel universe in which, apparently, there was a small town where the mayor and the fire chief and the high school football coach spent all their time joshing with one another at a diner run by a woman suffering from, judging by her voice, throat cancer, all at once the TV set sucked that picture into itself, went click, and spread across itself an image of three people moving on a bed, with no covers on. With no clothing on! Good gracious, what are those people doing?

Some horrible corner of the satellite village, some swamp beside the information highway, had suddenly thrust itself — oh, what an awful choice of words! — onto their TV screen. Gasping and shaking and little cries of horror ran through the room as Mrs. Krutchfield grabbed frantically for the remote control, only to find it had somehow fallen to the floor under her chair.

The people on-screen were also gasping and shaking and emitting little cries, though not of horror. 'Mrs. Krutchfield!' cried a midwesterner, a stout lady from Loose Falls, whose chubby hands were now a bas relief on the