The note under the windshield wiper said PLEASE CONTACT THE POLICE DEPARTMENT.

Normally, John preferred not to contact the police, but the paint along the driver side of his car had been reduced to black flecks peeling off in the wind. There wasn’t much getting around it.

The officer explained that a man at John’s apartment complex had thrown a Molotov cocktail into his girlfriend’s car. John’s 1976 Buick had been parked beside it.

There were sensible questions available. Was the man arrested? Would he pay? Did people who threw Molotov cocktails carry insurance?

John was twenty-one.

“Oh,” he said. “Okay. Thanks for letting me know.”

He learned things anyway. The difference between comprehensive and liability. That the Buick—less car than a boat—brown, upholstered in polyester split open to yellow foam—had seats that could brand bare skin in August. Now the driver side was scorched to primer and shed paint whenever he drove.

People stared. John did the thing where you look straight ahead.

A week later, the Buick overheated in a grocery-store parking lot beside a woman loading bags into her trunk. She studied the steam, then the door.

“What happened?”

John did the other thing, where you tell a stranger the truth.

“Your girlfriend set your car on fire?”

“Wait. What? No. Somebody else’s girlfriend. Her boyfriend got jealous.”

“Of you? What did you do?”

“No. Not because of me. I don’t have a girlfriend.” A pause he could hear himself make. “By choice.”

She laughed, and then she offered him a ride.

“Dee,” she said.

“John.”

She looked back at the smoking Buick. “Does this happen a lot?”

“Only when things are going well.”