A problem niggles at me and I’m compelled to make amends, repair it (though poorly). Or I’m in a fix of some sort, an unlucky situation, which only time might mend.

In the story that follows I’ve changed the spots on the map and people’s identities and certain other details, for reason you’ll quite understand.

The relatives in Indiana had a loveseat in the study with a puny pull-out mattress. If we stayed there, I got the mattress and Paulson a mat on the floor. He’d push it smack up against the pull-out frame’s metal leg. That way, we still got to sleep together. But this time other guests had been given the study. So that night Paulson and I drove down the road to Sam and Sadie’s to sleep. We knew these people only slightly.

We parked near the barn, silent, the horses and cows in slumberland. The house was just as quiet until we stepped into the vast empty kitchen and Sadie’s dog set to yapping maniacally. Sadie couldn’t shut him up. She had a few friendly words with us and sent us up a closed, claustrophobic staircase to the guest room.

I could see in the light from the torch Sadie’d given us that the walls didn’t match. Dark green paint on three? and the other one yellow? Not sure, anymore. The bed had a loud-patterned comforter, the kind you can get in a transparent zippered bag at Walmart, and polyester sheets.

Exploring further with our torch—flashlight, really, with a single monstrous battery, because the Amish prohibit electricity in their homes if it comes from a power company—we found the bathroom. Running water, huh. Hot water, whoa. How Sam and Sadie managed pressurized pipes, I didn’t quite understand, but while Paulson showered, I sat on the bathroom floor with the torch and read. I always do this at night—read to calm myself down.

In bed, in the pitch black, we tried to get comfy. Ug, the slippery sheets. Ug, the hard pillows. But I must’ve been tired enough. I fell asleep.

When I woke it was still dark.

Deciding to resort to my magazine, I got down on the floor beside the bed. That way the blast of torchlight wouldn’t hit Paulson’s face full on. But before long the thing started flickering. Why oh why hadn’t we brought up our teeny little flashlight we kept in the car? Then the torch went dead. I had to climb back into bed.

The window remained dark and remained dark and remained dark. I tossed. Now Paulson was flailing around, too. In addition to all my little agitated noises, the sheets wouldn’t stay up around his neck. “Think about the good,” he said. “You’re safe, you’re warm, you’re fed. Think about that.” Intermittently he dozed off, but my mind wouldn’t unknot. We were stuck. We couldn’t just get up and stuff our things back into our bags and steal downstairs and back into the night. We couldn’t start that dog to shrieking and rousting Sam and Sadie.

At what seemed a decent hour, our payment on the bedroom dresser, we hauled down the steps into the kitchen and the noise of Sadie’s propane-powered washing machine. Dumb us. Our hosts had been up before dawn, likely. Sam was out at the barn, but Sadie in her long draggy dress greeted us, cheer spilling across her face. Though daylight streamed into the room, Sadie’s lamp still stood by the sink—a low platform on wheels, holding a barbecue-grill size propane tank with a long pole poking up from it, and on top, a hot, bare-naked bulb.

Paulson sped us back up the road for breakfast. Despair lodged in my bones, I was near tears. I’d found no comfort in that strange, pious house, and even now, my prospects remained bleak. The coffee at the relatives’ house would be weak, maybe stale. It was never full bodied and riddled with cream like at home. I wanted to go home.

I know. The person you’re pitying is my husband. He can fall asleep anywhere. Were it not for my disgruntlement he wouldn’t have given those sheets a second thought. But if one of us is in a fix, so is the other—and what could be a lark, an adventure, takes on monstrous proportions. That’s part of the dilemma.