William Henry Devereaux, Jr.’s arrest for drunk driving turns a snowy late-night stop beside the Railton railyard into a collision between physical vulnerability, private dread, and absurd coincidence. He admits he has been drinking, cannot give a convincing account of where he is going, and is taken to the station; by morning, the arrest has also exposed how closely his restless night has been shadowed by Tony Coniglia’s.

Background and the Roadside Pause

The episode begins after dinner, where William Henry Devereaux, Jr. pays for his own meal and Tony Coniglia’s, while Tony pays for June Barnes’s and Teddy Barnes’s. Devereaux tells Tony he needs the men’s room. Earlier that afternoon he had managed an unusually forceful urination, but the relief has passed: the difficulty has returned, painfully and angrily. He sends Tony home rather than make him wait, partly because he expects to be a while. His body is already making the night feel precarious before the police appear.

Snow has begun falling heavily. Wet flakes quickly whiten the place where Tony’s car had been parked, and Devereaux reasons that conditions may be worse at Allegheny Wells, higher above Railton. At the gravel entrance to the railyard, he pulls over and watches the only other car he has seen since leaving the restaurant struggle up Pleasant Street Hill. Its rear end slides as its wheels spin; after reaching the first plateau, it stops, brake lights glowing, and remains there long enough for Devereaux to imagine a fellow traveler sharing his reluctance to continue. The car eventually turns away from the climb. Devereaux is left facing the dark yard and the black silhouettes of boxcars.

Those boxcars suggest a buried city, with only the upper edges of its buildings showing through the snow. The fanciful image makes the world seem to tilt and turns his stomach. In that disorientation, the memory of his mother’s reassurance, “We will forget this,” returns across decades. The arrest follows not just a drive through snow but a moment when physical unease, imaginative escape, and the past have already unsettled his sense of direction.

The Officer and the Arrest

Devereaux is unsure whether he wants the next piece of news he expects: he is due to speak with Phil Watson the following day about a possible abnormality in his prostate. He does not want to die, yet recognizes that some part of him might be exhilarated by a frightening diagnosis. Nor does he want Lily Devereaux to leave him; still, imagining her finding a new love stirs a wish he can scarcely explain. Tony Coniglia’s idea of being permitted only half seems to offer a name for these divided desires. The exchange with the officer interrupts this private reckoning with an immediate question of what the law will permit.

A young uniformed officer approaches through the snow, and Devereaux realizes a police cruiser’s red and blue lights have been flashing behind him. He gives the officer his license. The officer checks it by flashlight, then shines the beam into Devereaux’s face to confirm his identity and asks him to step out. Devereaux agrees. Asked whether he has been drinking, he answers yes; asked where he is headed, he cannot offer a settled answer. He names Allegheny Wells, but the officer replies that the destination is not what Devereaux thinks: he is going to the back seat of the cruiser. The officer takes him by the elbow and drives him to the station.

On the short ride, Devereaux notices the officer watching him in the rearview mirror. At the station the officer tells him to tell the truth, then recognizes him as “that duck guy,” a reference to Devereaux’s public identity. The recognition gives the encounter an incongruously familiar turn: the person being taken into custody is not anonymous to the officer, but known through a previous, comic public episode.

The Cell and the Missed Calls

Devereaux’s one phone call goes to Tony, whom he blames for the predicament. There is no answer. He considers calling Teddy Barnes, who would probably welcome the chance to add a new Devereaux story to his repertoire, but decides against it: Teddy would tell the story badly, and Devereaux has been unkind to him at dinner. The decision leaves him to manage the night without either friend’s help, although he insists to the escort that he has other people he could call, including academic deans.

The older officer asks whether Devereaux’s wife is home and suggests that the station has “lovely accommodations.” Devereaux is led to a drunk tank on a Monday night. It is nearly empty: six cots, with only one occupied. The officer calls this an unusually upscale arrangement and points out that Devereaux will have a roommate.

That roommate is Tony. Devereaux understands the apparent contradiction by applying the logic of Occam’s Razor: Tony did not answer because he was not at home, and he must be at the station instead. He chooses not to wake him. The delay preserves the possibility of Tony’s bewilderment when he wakes and discovers Devereaux in the same cell, a brief suspension of ordinary explanation that Devereaux knows his friend will be eager to eliminate.

The Morning After and the Event’s Reversal

In the morning, Tony explains that he used his own phone call to leave a message on Devereaux’s machine. Devereaux grins and tells him he called too, but Tony was absent as well. He produces aspirin from the Lincoln’s glove compartment, which he had wisely brought into the station, and Tony chews several tablets while they compare what happened. Their accounts establish that the same young officer picked up both men, about half an hour apart, and that neither has been charged.

The arrest therefore ends not with a charge or a formal resolution of the men’s conduct, but with recognition and coincidence. The lonely, snowbound pause beside the railyard becomes an overnight encounter with Tony; the failed phone calls that seemed to confirm their separation turn out to have led both men to the same cell. The episode’s comic reversal does not erase Devereaux’s physical anxiety or his admission that he had been drinking. Instead, it places those real stakes beside the absurd intimacy of waking up beside a friend whom each had unsuccessfully tried to reach.