Sam Zehedi swallowed hard. "I'm okay," he said. And he concentrated on the twin red lights ahead of him, the beating raindrops that slipped into the cones of the headlights and out again faster than the eye could follow. He concentrated on the feel of the gas pedal, feeding the gas delicately. _You're driving_, he told himself. _So drive and don't worry._ But in less than five minutes he humbly asked Groff, "You know anything about insurance?" "Some," Groff said reluctantly. He could guess what was coming. "Well, to tell you the truth I don't remember what my policy on the store was like. Fire, of course, and extended coverage. That means water damage, doesn't it?" "I'm afraid not," Groff told him, feeling rotten. "Under some special circumstances, yes--but what's back there, no. If it were primarily windstorm damage with water damage secondary--for instance, if wind tore your roof off and rain ruined your stock, you could collect. But nobody's covered against--flood." The word was out in the open at last. Zehedi choked back a sob. _You're driving. So drive._ But in less than five minutes he found himself railing to Groff that it wasn't fair, that he'd lost five years of work, that he would have been ready to look for a wife in another three years, a good old-fashioned girl from the New York or Detroit colonies of Syrians, somebody who could cook the old-country food--God, how sick he was of hamburgers and soda pop, sometimes he looked at a hamburger when he thought he was hungry and just put it down and walked away with a pain in his belly. "So why," he asked indignantly, a little hysterically, "didn't I stay in the colony and eat my mother's cooking? I'll tell you why. Because I wanted to be my own boss, I wanted to be a pioneer, it's no good crowding into the big cities and working for other people. In this country you have to make money to be respected, nobody respects you if you're just a working stiff all your life. So I saved and I bought that place through a broker and I've been slaving for five years, eating the lousy food and thinking about broiled lamb I'm going to eat every day when I find a wife, and then...." He subsided and the rain drummed down.