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BOOK TWENTY-ONE: THE DELTA AQUARIDS

196. The next morning, it looked as if . . . .

            The next morning, it looked as if Mattie and I had gotten away with murder. When I entered the brand-new municipal building Thursday—I hitchhiked to downtown Lincoln from the soybean factory out in Havelock and passed by the old brick police station on the way to the new one—the place was aswarm with cops, in and out of uniform, with a scattering of brown-shirted sheriff’s deputies among them. I had to wait forty minutes before the chief of detectives would see me.

            “What do you want, Smith?” he said when I finally stood before his desk. “Make it snappy.”

            “You searched my workplace with dogs,” I said. “You’ll get me fired.”

            “Boyo, I could give a fuck whether you get fired,” he said. “Yeah, we brought the doggies. So what? We took ‘em out to Francis Vinahlek’s pig farm, too. A big old sow tried to eat one of our dogs; I should send you the vet bill.”

            “Who’s Francis Vinahlek?”

            The big detective leaned back in his chair. “You’ll know him as Eddie Romance,” he said. “He’s a bandleader, but he has other businesses. He never sleeps, does Francis.” I must’ve looked puzzled. “It’s where that shit from the bean factory goes. Francis Vinahlek’s pig farm. Those pigs’ll eat anything, including each other. You want to know what happened after we shot that sow? A couple of fellows cut her open and threw her right back in the pen.” The detective allowed himself a brief little tic of revulsion. “Illegal as hell, of course, but it’s not our department. I’ll send a memo to the state inspector, who happens to be an in-law of Francis’s. I wish I could do more. I love those dogs.”

            “You didn’t find anything.”

            “No, we didn’t.” He rose and went to a corner of his office, bending down to retrieve a brown paper package. “You can have these, too. Your shirts. We’ll need you to sign a receipt.”

            “So, am I off the hook?”

            The detective laughed, a sharp bark. “Let me tell you how it is around here today,” he said, returning to his chair. “Yesterday there was a mobile-home fire west of town. A vacant trailer, or so it appears; that’s being looked into. Anyway, one of the firemen has to take a crap, so he goes loping off into this old shed that’s full of hay. What does he see behind the hay but a brand-new 1970 Corvette. When the fire department guy gets done wiping himself, he mentions the ‘Vette to a deputy who’s there to direct traffic, and this deputy gets off his lazy rural ass and checks out the numbers. Who’s the owner of the Corvette, you ask? Some doctor up in Omaha; his precious toy’s been missing for about a week. Who’s the owner of the shed and trailer? Some church nobody seems to know anything about. Turns out, though,” he said, glowering up at me, “your pal Don Stinns has been paying the utilities on that trailer. Any of this interest you?”

            “Not particularly,” I said.

            “Well, it sure as hell interested the sheriff’s department, because they know Don Stinns worked for us before he got shot, and they also know he’s not healthy enough to be stealing cars. So to make a short story shorter, they dust the ‘Vette for prints and come knocking first thing this morning to look through our files.” He paused and struck the desk with a thick knuckle. “Our files. Not the files we keep on suspects. The ones we keep on ourselves. In other words,” he said, shoving a trembling hand through his tight-curled hair, “the Lancaster County Sheriff’s Department, who haven’t closed out a case in the last twelve years, is investigating me. Us, I should say.” He flushed darker. “Somebody in a blue uniform is going to hang for this, and I hope to God it isn’t your dumb-ass cousin.”

            “Dale’s involved?”

            “He’s one they’re looking at.” The detective drummed his fingers on the desk. “‘What does this mean to me?’ you’re asking yourself; I can see you pricking up your pointy ears. I’ll tell you what it means, mister. This auto-theft investigation is going to be such a headache— Such a drain on my time, such a soul-searching, heart-breaking, ulcer-producing terror— that pinning that murder on you is going to be just like a vacation for me. I’m making you my personal hobby, Smith. What do you say to that?” He flexed his biceps and showed me a bulldog smile.

            “‘Tis an honor I dream not of,” I replied.

            “Start dreaming,” he said. “Where’d you go yesterday? Two guys who were supposed to tail you are joining the Meter Maid Brigade as of this morning.”

            “I don’t remember. I think I fell asleep under a tree.”

            “Unh hunh,” he said. He slid open a drawer and took out a file folder. “We’ve got a name,” he said. “Tentatively. A World War Two vet who’s an outpatient at the VA. Will Stark, also known as Memphis Slim, also Memphis Billy. No fixed address. We copied his fingerprints from his VA file; his prints are on that Falcon, as are yours. We even found an instance where a print of yours might be on top of one of his, but unfortunately it’s not conclusive. We’re still looking.” He glanced up at me. “It’ll take time off your sentence if you ‘fess up,” he offered reasonably.

            “I have nothing to ‘fess,” I said.

            The detective looked at me blandly. “How about this?” he said. “You went to get something you’d hid in the car; drugs, maybe. I don’t care what it was. This old boy’s sleeping there, see, and he challenges you with a knife. We have his knife already; I showed it to you yesterday. He comes at you, and you clobber him with a tire wrench. The lug-wrench in your truck’s not original equipment, by the way.” He gave me a shrewd look. “Voluntary homicide, five to fifteen. Young guy like you, possibly a bit confused, they won’t give you the max. Because of the knife, you could argue self-defense, maybe get off Scot-free. How’s that sound?”

            “Can’t help you,” I said. “Sorry.”

            “Yeah,” he growled. “You’re going to be sorry, all right.” The phone rang; he covered it with his hand. “Get out of here, Smith,” he said. “Don’t leave town without telling me ahead of time. Expect a call the minute we find a body.” He picked up the receiver. “Yeah?” he said. “I’ll be there in a minute.” He slammed it down. “Now, if that wouldn’t cut your cock off,” he hissed. “Those clumsy morons are asking to fingerprint me.”

            “Maybe you’d better confess,” I said. “Take some time off your sentence.”

            He paled. “Please leave this vicinity,” he said softly, “before I commit a homicide of my own.”

(blank line)

197. I smiled to myself. . . .

            I smiled to myself as I left the station for the short walk home. The chief of detectives hadn’t made the Grace Kuzak connection; her Falcon, her trailer. Apparently Dale’s and Don Stinns’s knowledge of my sleeping with Kroger’s wife did not extend all the way to the top. Maybe Dale would keep his mouth shut for me. I smiled, that is, until I saw a cattle truck parked where it shouldn’t be, on F Street half a block from my apartment. Smith and Son. I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk; as the aroma of ancient cow manure wafted over me from the slatted trailer, tears sprang to my eyes. I didn’t do it, Dad! I wanted to shout out. It was Mattie! It wasn’t me! My lower lip trembled childishly; “It wasn’t me,” I repeated aloud. “I swear it wasn’t.”

            Oh yes.

            I took a step forward, then another. Julia’s beat-up station wagon was still parked at the curb; apparently she’d put off going to work. The two of them were waiting for me together. I wouldn’t have to go over the same lies twice.

            All this on an empty stomach. It didn’t seem fair.

            I kept my feet moving, left, right, left, right, and managed to round the corner and approach my questioners. Ah, the people who love you can be such a pain! I longed for a life like Memphis Billy’s, one free of explanations, until I realized I could have it if I wanted it; it wasn’t that far away. Somewhere, sometime, there probably was a woman who wondered where in the hell he’d been. Maybe more than one.

            She never would catch up with him now.

            I opened the door of the basement entrance—a cardinal was singing—and before it closed behind me, Julia was halfway up the stairs. “Jonas! There’s a man here. He says—”

            “—He’s my father,” I finished. “And he is. Why aren’t you at work this morning? Did you quit?”

            “Jonas, don’t ask me about my stupid job! Where were you yesterday?”

            “Back and forth in the world,” I said. “Up and down in it. Where’s Dad? Did you let him light a cigarette?” Julia had given up smoking because of her pregnancy—it made her sick, or so she said—and was determined that no one else should light up either.

            “Jo-naas!” She clutched at me as I passed her on the steps. “You can’t just not talk to me!”

            “Look at my lips,” I said. “My mouth is open and words are coming out. That means I’m talking. Hi, Dad.”

            My father sat at the kitchen table, smoking and drinking coffee. He looked up sadly as I came in. “Hello, son,” he said. “I came to find out what’s goin’ on down here.”

            I drew a shaky breath. “The cops are missing a wino since Saturday morning. They’ve been asking me about him. I swear I never met the man.”

            “There was blood on your shirt on Saturday,” my father said. “They sent a man up special to look for that shirt. I tried my best to help ‘em, but we couldn’t find it. Where is it?”

            “Aw, hell, I must’ve washed it,” I said. “It’s around somewhere. Have you had breakfast?”

            “I ate already,” my father said. “They were screening the ashes in the burning-barrel out at the shop, looking for shirt-buttons. What did you do?”

            “Nothing,” I said.

            “The thing is,” my father said, “I know you.”

            “And?”

            “You have never been a hundred per cent successful,” my father said, “at lyin’ to me.”

            I sighed; I was going to have to give him something. “OK,” I said. “I hit a man. I left him lying in a puddle of his own piss. He must’ve got up and walked away, because now they can’t find him. End of story.”

            “Did you tell ‘em that?”

            “No,” I said. “It’s none of their fucking business.”

            “Maybe you’d better.”

            “I won’t.” I turned to look at Julia, leaning open-mouthed against the doorframe. “Don’t you tell them, either,” I said.

            “Jonas, when were you fighting on Saturday?” she asked. “I told the police you were in bed with me.”

            “It happened in the early morning,” I said. “I was down by the trainyards, looking to borrow some gas.”

            My father exhaled noisily. “Son,” he said, “if you need money—”

            “This has nothing to do with money,” I said angrily. “We’re both working. We’ve got plenty of money.”

            “Sometimes I wish for your sake,” my father said, “that the world had never invented gasoline. You might’ve got along all right with coal-oil lamps and horses.”

            “I wasn’t planning to set any fires, if that’s what you mean,” I said.

            “You two are talking code,” Julia said. “Jonas, honey, are you in trouble? Should I call Bob Warner?”

            “I wouldn’t tell him anything I haven’t told you,” I said. “They haven’t charged me. Why don’t you go to work?”

            “Please, Jonas,” she said. “Your father and I are trying to help you. Don’t be ugly.”

            “That’s what he hates the most,” my father said, “is bein’ helped.” He sipped his coffee and lit another cigarette. “Son, suppose you and me go down to the police station here and see if we can’t get this straightened out.”

            “I was there five minutes ago,” I said. “They ordered me to leave.” I stood tight-lipped between Julia in the doorway and my father at the table; my ears burned with shame at the way I was treating them. Well, killers have to be tough. “Look, people,” I said. “It’s not all that fun to be a suspect in a murder case—”

            Julia blanched. “Murder!”

            “That’s what they’re calling it,” I said, “even though they haven’t got a body. Anyway—”

            “Son,” my father interrupted, “you’re still not tellin’ us everything. I’m goin’ to the police station and see if I can find out what the deal is here. I’m not hidin’ a thing on your behalf, and I think you ought to come with me.”

            “I won’t,” I said.

            “I’m calling Warner,” Julia said. “This has gotten too weird, Jonas.”

            “Jesus Christ!” I shouted. “Haven’t I been interrogated enough? Will you let me get my fucking breakfast, for crying out loud?” I balled my fists, and Julia drew back from me, while my father rose and pushed back his chair. He stepped around the table and came up to me.

            “You’re going to need our help,” he said. “Tell me the truth, now. Did you kill some old boy on Saturday and hide the body?”

            I met his earnest gaze. “No,” I said. I didn’t hide the body. My eyes slid away toward Julia. “Please, I’ve been at work; I need to eat.”

            “They give a man three square meals a day down here at the penitentiary,” my father said. “But not much in the way of variety, is what I’ve heard.”

            “I’m not going to the pen,” I said. “That I promise you.”

            “I wish I could say I was reassured,” my father said. “Well, I can see you want me to butt out. You know where I’ll be. A phone call once in a while wouldn’t hurt.”

            “I’m sorry I had to leave right after the funeral,” I said. “I should’ve spoken to you.”

            “That wasn’t nothin’,” my father said, “compared to this.” He put on his baseball cap and left me standing with Julia. After he went up the stairs, she lowered her eyes.

            “I was in the bathroom throwing up when he came,” she said. “I guess he knows I’m pregnant.”

            “My poor father,” I said. “What must he think of me!”

            “Do you care what I think of you, Jonas?” Julia asked.

            I gave her a level look while I weighed her question. “No,” I admitted finally.

            She looked hurt to the core, but her gaze did not flinch. “I thought not,” she said softly. “If you weren’t in trouble, and if I had another place to stay, I’d leave you.”

            “You’d better go to work,” I said, gentling my voice a little. “You’ll lose your job.”

            “A job this good I can get any time,” Julia said wearily. “I’m going to tell Warner’s office what’s going on. Is there anything special you want me to say when the cops question me?”

            “Don’t say anything,” I said. “Tell ‘em you told ‘em everything you know already.”

            “I can do that,” she said. “Goodbye, Jonas. I guess I’ll see you this evening.”

            “I expect to be here,” I replied. “This is my apartment, after all.”

            “You should use it more often,” Julia said. “Goodbye.”

(blank line)

198. After Julia got home. . . .

            After Julia got home from Hinky Dinky that evening, we made it up a little, but when the time came around for me to take her to bed, I couldn’t do my part. For the first time in my life, I stood naked, willing to perform, but with a limp noodle. The sight of her exposed female parts made me think of meat. “Jonas, what’s the matter?” Julia asked.

            “I don’t know,” I said. “To tell the truth, I’m surprised by this.” I shook my limp penis. “Shit,” I said.

            “How romantic,” Julia said. “Well, do something else, then. I’m keen for it.”

            I eyed her eager pussy, its peeping buds. Meat. “I can’t,” I said, my mouth dry.

            “Jonas,” she cried, real pain in her voice. She bounced her hips in frustration. “Honey, I’ve gotten used to it. I’ll go crazy.”

            “I can’t help it,” I said, afire with embarrassment. “I don’t know. There’s something the matter with me.”

            She rolled dejectedly onto her side. “You shouldn’t have started, then. What did you turn me on for, if you didn’t want me?”

            “I’m sorry. I thought I wanted to fuck you, but I don’t.”

            “Fine,” she said. She sat up on the edge of the bed. “Now I’m hungry. What do you want for dinner?”

            Her overlarge, blue-veined breasts were the size of two dressed hens. “Vegetarian pasta?”

            “How about a T-bone steak? My treat.”

            “Think of something else,” I said. “Rice and beans?”

            “There really is something wrong with you,” Julia said, getting to her feet and pushing past me in the direction of the bathroom. “Maybe you should see a doctor.”

            “I’ll be OK,” I said. “Just don’t offer me anything that’s had blood in it.”

            “That’s a severe limit,” she said from the toilet. “This thing about blood is a Jewish prejudice, did you know that? Something about seething a kid in its mother’s milk.” She reappeared, stretching. “You don’t have anything against dairy products, do you? We could get ice cream.”

            “Ice cream sounds good,” I said. “We could have it with beer.”

            “That sounds more like the Jonas I know,” Julia said. “Let’s go.”

            We’d dressed and were on our way out the door when the phone rang. I glanced at Julia and picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

            “Yeah, hello,” a gravelly voice replied. “Who I’m talkin to here?”

            “This is Jonas Smith.”

            “Yeah, Smith, the one-arm drummer. Hey, Smith, you know a number I can call to get me Miss Captain Julia?”

            “She’s here.” I handed the phone off to Julia. “I think it’s Wide Load Wilson,” I whispered. Her eyes widened.

            “This is Julia Stein,” she said politely. “Hello?” I watched her as she listened to the Carter Lake publican; she swept her eyes toward me and clutched at her chest. “What did you say? OK. Sure. Oh, my God. Yes.” She listened some more. “August the eighth,” she said finally. “Nine p.m. Yes, sir. Got it!” She hung up the receiver and screamed. “JO-NASS!” She bear-hugged me about the waist, picked me up bodily, and began dancing me around the kitchen. “Oh! Oh! Oh! Wow! Whew!” She released me and stepped back, fanning herself. “Oh, man! That was better than sex. Now we have something to celebrate, Jonas!”

            “What did Wilson want? Is it another gig?”

            “Better than that,” Julia said. “Alys Culhane is coming to Omaha again. She asked for me to open. Alys Culhane asked for me! Jonas, can you believe it? I almost had a heart attack.” She looked at me. “Well, say something,” she said. “This is great news, isn’t it?”

            “Did he mention whether he wants me to take tickets?”

            “Oh, pooh!” Julia grinned. “I’m not going to let you depress me.” A shadow crossed her face. “I’ll have to tell the boys,” she said. “It’s difficult, because they’re not speaking to one another.” I looked at her quizzically. “Your innocent-faced heartthrob Selva Andersen dragged Mark off into the weeds at her wedding dance,” Julia explained. “No one saw what happened and Mark’s not one to blab, but we assume they fucked.”

            “I thought you told me she was balling Shemansky.”

            “Well, duh,” Julia said. “Get real, Jonas. The woman is a man-hater and a trouble-maker; I don’t understand why I still like her. Let’s go eat.” She sashayed out the door, humming, while I stared after her. McKinley and Shemansky! How I wished I’d kept my promise of midwinter, to hang them off the viaduct by their frozen penises. And on her wedding night! I seethed with rage and desire. At the head of the stairs, Julia turned to look back at me. “Jonas, are you coming?”

            “I’m right behind you,” I said. “I’m putting my boots on, is all.”

            “Well, gather your wits,” Julia said. “Think of ice cream. I’ll go start the car.”

(blank line)

199. My summer with Julia. . . .

            My summer with Julia settled into a routine that was driven by mutual avoidance and by a lack of money. Julia worked days, rehearsing with the boys in the evenings, and slept while I shoveled beans from midnight to eight a.m. I got my few hours’ sleep during the daytime and drank beer in Casey’s every evening it was open. On the weekends Julia went up to Omaha, while I spent the hot afternoons reassembling my truck. The police had searched it as thoroughly as a truck can be searched, looking for blood and dope, then left me the frame and body with the seat and floor mats and dashboard and door panels piled in the back. Until I put the seat back in—I had to re-stuff it, and reupholster it with canvas—I drove to work each night sitting on a plastic milk crate.

            I had no word from the cops, nor they from me. The story that a car-theft ring had operated out of Lincoln made front-page news, and the Highway Patrol was called in to investigate the L. P. D.; I heard through Al Foonts that my cousin Dale McFerrin was one who’d been questioned. In the meantime I found the driver who delivered bean grit to Francis Vinahlek’s pig farm. He said he simply dumped it from a ramp overlooking the pen, and the shrieking pigs clambered over it, devil take the hindmost. It was a perfect setup to dispose of Memphis Billy.

            For the first time in my life since I dribbled and spurted my way through puberty, I had no desire for sex or for sexual gratification. Each time I looked at a pretty woman walking down the sidewalk, my conscience dragged me back to the morning I’d spent cynically humping Mattie while the tattooed wino sat folded into the refrigerator. Not that my sperm-batteries shut down—my wet dreams featured violence to Selva Andersen—but I couldn’t bring my lust to daylight. It ran deep underground to poison the well of sleep.

            I did not see Mattie Halliday. I once spotted her VW Microbus parked near the dumpster at Russ’s IGA, but I didn’t go looking for her. I did check our bin at the locker plant, and saw that the packages remained as we had stacked them; I felt relieved that she hadn’t turned cannibal, though it left me with sixty pounds of Billy on my hands. Sometime after the first week in July—the weather was hot, the city was a steam-bath that summer—I dropped the first two packages of thawed-out Billy into the main auger an hour before I finished work. I left the mint-green butcher paper in a trash can at a public swimming pool in Havelock, and drove clear across Lincoln to the hippie cafe on South Street to have breakfast. I ordered oatmeal with brown sugar, or else pancakes without butter; concomitant with the revolution in my sex life, I’d become a vegetarian. Julia viewed these changes with suspicion, but she said little except to note that our food bill was lower since I quit eating meat, and that I was getting thinner.

            Julia did not get thinner. Each time I saw her—not every day, though we shared a bed—she looked visibly more pregnant. We no longer spoke of an abortion, though it was plain to see that time was running out.

(blank line)

200. “The trouble is, Jonas. . . .”

            “The trouble is, Jonas,” Selva Anderson said as she stirred her vodka Collins, “we’re not clean enough, you and I. Maybe it’s what’s the trouble with the whole peace movement.”

            I noted the puckering-together of her copper eyebrows, the skim-milk-bluish paleness of her lids. “I know a cure for that,” I offered. “We could go swimming after the bar closes.”

            “Where?”

            “There’s a couple of places people use,” I said nonchalantly. “I’ve been out hundreds of times.” This was a flat lie, but I thought I could at least find one of the ponds, at a Game and Parks recreation area northwest of Lincoln.

            “I don’t think so,” Selva replied. “Besides, you have to work.” Adrian was being courted that summer, flown from the Midwest to interviews on both coasts, his skills in demand despite his radical credentials. His bride of five weeks had taken to showing up at Casey’s—they no longer needed her at Barrymore’s—and, unaccountably, of spending an hour or two each evening talking to me. I would sit facing the dusty windows and look for her when the red-hot glow of sunset outside the bar gave way to the blue of streetlamps. She would step in out of the muggy heat, her red hair pinned up, wearing another of those long-sleeved blouses buttoned tightly at the throat and at the wrists; after surveying the room, she would approach my booth like a stranger stalking a seat at a cafeteria.

            Now I reached across the table to touch the back of her hand, a liberty she winced at but permitted. “My soybean job is nothing,” I told her. “I could quit tomorrow.”

            “You need the money for Julia.”

            “Oh, blah,” I said. I turned her hand over to study the delicate map-line that webbed her wrist. “What is that thing?” I asked.

            “Scar tissue,” she said. She reached across to unbutton her cuff, and pushed it back to show me that the line ran up her forearm. “I am extensively scarred, especially on my back. Since you wish to know.” She pulled the sleeve down firmly into place and buttoned it again. “It’s an old burn,” she said. “My brother invented napalm independently. He needed someone to try it out on, and there I was.”

            “Jesus Christ,” I said. “How old were you?”

            “Five. I missed a semester of kindergarten because of it.” She lifted her drink with cool precision, sipped it and set it down carefully. It fit the ring it had left on the table to within a millimeter. “I missed other things, too,” she said. “I refused to be in gym class in high school because I couldn’t bear to shower with a roomful of girls. I have never learned to swim. And I told you once that I took my boys in the dark; the scar is why.” She leaned forward, tugging her collar sideways, and lifted a wisp of red hair off her neck. “See, it comes out here, too,” she said, touching a faint alteration in her skin. “Now you know the reason for all these high-collared blouses.”

            Though my heartbeat quickened, I sighed with feigned weariness at the evils of the world. “So what happened to your brother? Did he get sent away to reform school?”

            “Nothing happened. My parents made up a story. My father insists on keeping things in the family.” She regarded me solemnly. “Believe this, Jonas. Don’t look at me like I’m weird.”

            I tilted my empty beer glass and examined the drop of liquid in the bottom. “You have two brothers, am I right? Where are they now?”

            “The one who did this to me was killed in a flying accident,” she said. “The other is living at home, which is why I never go there. One reason, anyway.”

            “Did you ever wonder what it would be like to grow up in a normal family?”

            Selva shrugged. “I thought my family was normal,” she said. “Show me a normal family.”

            I went up to the bar to replenish my beer, and got Selva another Collins while I was there. When I came back to the booth, I found it empty except for the scent of her. She used a special bath soap that was made with kelp, she said, for her skin. I had often imagined Selva in her skin, though I’d never actually seen much more than a forearm’s worth. It did not clarify my mental picture to learn of the scar.

            The air conditioner above the entrance flailed the smoke, but it didn’t do enough to lower the temperature. Casey’s was noisy, with the shuffleboard and a couple of pinball machines going, but it was not the same campus-radical crowd as during the winter. A fat moist-lipped man in a black leather vest and a tee shirt was slapping the pinball machine nearest me; a pitcher of beer dripped condensation on the sloping glass. The blonde watching him was sort of a regular, but she was just as regular in any of the downtown bars. Selva returned from the rest room and collapsed in the booth, wearing a disgusted frown. “Cripes, it’s hot back there,” she said. “Makes you sick.”

            “You OK?”

            “Yeah.” She pulled herself up wearily to fit the correct pose she’d vacated, and lifted her drink. “I just wish I could cool off for a minute.”

            “It’s your clothing,” I observed. “It’s too tight.” I fiddled with my beer. “Come swimming with me.”

            “I don’t even know how to swim. I just told you.”

            “Me neither.” I swallowed a cold encouraging throatful. “Also, your butthole,” I pronounced boldly with foam in my moustache. “That’s too tight, too.”

            Selva slapped her glass to the table. “Jonas!” she said angrily. “You don’t know a goddamned thing about my butthole.”

            “I know you’re a little rigid in some respects,” I said. “In spite of your episodes with men like McKinley and Shemansky.”

            “And you,” she added grimly. “Which I now regret.”

            “I’m in a different class from those two.”

            “That’s right,” she said. “You’re slimier.”

            We drank in silence for a while. At some point she put her glass down. “All right,” she said bitterly. “Fine.”

            “What?”

            “I’ll go swimming with you.”

            “Now?”

            “Why not?” She glared at me a bit drunkenly. “Having qualms, are we?”

            I gulped my beer to hide my consternation. “Stage fright,” I admitted, lowering my glass.

            Selva slid to the end of the bench and stood up. “I have no time,” she said, “for a bourgeois posing as an adventurer. I’m leaving. This bar’s too hot.” She turned and moved off rapidly toward the door, while I lurched to my feet and stumbled after her, my sick heart slamming the bars of its cage like a lunatic trapped in a coal bin. I reached the door in time to hold it for her, and leaned against it, panting, as she passed through. “What’s the matter, Jonas?” she asked mockingly. “You’re breathing as though you just ran a quarter mile uphill.”

            “I’m terrified,” I said. “You’re too beautiful. I don’t know what to do.”

            “You’d better know where this pond is,” she said. “Otherwise I’m going to think you’re the biggest liar I ever met in my life.”

(blank line)

201. I had brought my pickup. . . .

            I had brought my pickup uptown in order that I might go direct from Casey’s to the factory, not seeing Julia; we walked east on P Street and turned toward where I had parked, in an angle space in front of the burned-out bookstore. The air was weighty and soft, and smelled of diesel and roses. “Tell me another life,” Selva said. “I’m tired of mine.”

            “Books and classes, you mean?”

            “Thank-you notes and relatives,” she said. “Hurt feelings and laundry.”

            “Adrian?”

            “I’m giving Adrian the benefit of the doubt,” she said. “He’s having it worse than me. They’re his relatives.”

            “Well,” I said. We reached my truck; I escorted her to the passenger’s side and pulled open the door. “If there’s stuff on the seat, just throw it on the floor,” I said. She shot me a disdainful look, and I walked around the front of the truck and got in. “When we were in pilot training in Del Rio, we used to talk about how much money we could make flying drugs over the border.” I started the truck and backed away from the curb. “It’s a booming market,” I said. “All the dentists and attorneys are starting to use cocaine. It’s not just for the Kennedys any more.”

            “I can fly,” Selva said. “I can see in the dark like a cat. We’ll be pilot and co-pilot.”

            “I’ll teach you multi-engine,” I said. “We’ll get an old DC-3. They make wonderful dope planes.”

            “Now you’re talking,” Selva said. “Tell me about Mexico.”

            “What I know of Mexico is mainly the whorehouses.”

            “Tell me about the whorehouses,” Selva said.

            “Uff da,” I said, glancing at her from the corner of my eye. “OK, well, here you go. There’s this town across the river called Villa Acunia; it isn’t much of a town, and it isn’t much of a river. You pass the customs house on the American side and go over this narrow two-lane bridge that’s exactly like some of the bridges you see around here—concrete, with a walkway along one side and thick concrete railings as high as your car windows. Then you come to the guardhouse on the Mexican side, and these fat old guys in gray uniforms give you a big dirty smile and wave you through. Now you’re on the main street of Acunia, in the respectable tourist part of town. This is where you would buy your tequila; we used to get the dark kind, because it’s smoother.”

            “Don’t the whorehouses sell liquor?” Selva asked.

            “Sure they do,” I said. “Two dollars for a mixed drink. Two dollars is a lot of money in Mexico. Besides, you don’t know where those ice cubes have been.”

            “What next?”

            “Let’s see. This is where you might wish you had rented a taxi, because the streets are terrible. Also, if you’d happen to run over a child, you could wind up in jail for the rest of your life, which might not be many years in a jail in Mexico. We usually would park in a lot with an attendant and get a cab.” The words jail and life raised a chill that went down my arms; just behind me, in the bed of the pickup, sat a cardboard box that held two green packages of Billy.

            “And?” Selva wanted to know about the whorehouses and wasn’t letting me off the hook. “Go straight,” she added as I signaled to turn west on O. “Drive to my apartment. I need to tell Adrian what I’m doing.”

            The light changed and I started across O Street. “Shit,” I said, harsh gravity pulling at me. “I thought Adrian was out of town.”

            “If he was, I would most definitely not be going swimming with you,” Selva said. “Don’t think I’m starting an affair with you, Jonas Smith.”

            I glanced across at her pinned-up hair. “Events tend to unfold however they will,” I said. “What I think is worth about as much as what you think.”

            “It’s a chance to get out of town,” Selva said coldly. “Sometimes I envy Adrian all his traveling.”

            I turned east at F Street—no cop car waited in front of my own apartment—and drove the remaining block and a half in silence. The upper floor of the old judge’s house blazed with light. “Looks like he’s on full alert,” I said.

            “Adrian likes a lot of light,” Selva said. “It helps him make decisions.” I pulled up into the narrow driveway and waited while she went inside. The drinks I’d taken were having an effect, and I must’ve dozed because when she pulled the door open it startled me. “Let’s go,” she said. She tossed a grocery bag onto the seat and climbed in awkwardly, carrying a two-liter bottle, half empty. “This wine is really bad,” she said, shaking the bottle. “You could stain wood with it, but who wants grape-colored furniture?”

            I started the pickup. “What’s in the sack?”

            “Swim suits. One for me and one for you. I’m not going skinny-dipping with you.” I backed out of the driveway and pointed the pickup west. “You were telling me about the whores of Villa Acunia,” she said. “You were getting to the good part, except you were starting to stall out.”

            “I’m embarrassed.”

            “Don’t be,” she said. “I already think ill of you.”

(blank line)

202. As we drove north and west. . . .

            As we drove north and west from Lincoln, in the direction of the town of Valparaiso, I found myself describing the particulars of a trip to the border brothels. Tawdry sex is still sex—by some accounts, it’s the best kind—and as I ransacked my memory for details, I experienced a little of the old excitement. Selva’s curiosity seemed more prurient than would square with her feminism, so I asked her. “Well,” she said, “I’ve been fucked by fools and fondled by experts, but in every other way I’m just a small-town girl. All my real experience has been through literature.”

            “Being napalmed by your brother doesn’t count?”

            “My brother was a bully with the morals of a toad,” Selva said. “Nothing he did to me will help me understand the world I married into when I married Adrian.”

            “No way can I help you there,” I said. “I had a hoochmate for a time who fell from that planet, but I could never get into his head. My buddy through pilot training, the one I’d hit the brothels with, was from Philadelphia, but he grew up middle class.” I pictured Stuart Miller and his smirk before and after; prostitution ran against his politics, but he liked shifting his load. “I say he was middle class,” I added, “but now that I think about it, probably everywhere we went—Del Rio and Villa Acunia, the base and Ba Rang—was nothing but a cow town to Stuart. What Stuart truly loved was professional baseball.”

            “God help me if I have to learn baseball. Is Stuart the one you told me about who’s dead?”

            “Killed by a grenade. That was partly my fault. Tommy Tex went catatonic and had to be shipped home. Braithwaite is up North, if he’s alive. I’m the survivor.”

            A brown rectangular sign showed up in the headlights; I slowed the pickup and turned off the highway onto a narrow road that led between two cornfields. Selva sneezed. “Pollen,” she said. “I wonder if there’s pollen in Mexico.”

            “It’s weird plant sex,” I said. “You have to love it.”

            “No, I don’t,” she said. “Did you bring any drinking water? I need to take an antihistamine.”

            “There’s only the wine,” I said. A padlocked chain hung across the road; I got out with the tire iron and spread one of the eyebolts so that I could unhook the chain, then drove us through and hung it back up again. “This park closes at ten p.m.,” I informed Selva. “That’s what the sign said.”

            “I can read,” Selva said. “It also said that alcoholic beverages are prohibited.”

            “They can’t possibly mean that,” I said. “After all, this lake is for fishermen.” I drove right down the boat ramp and parked with the pickup’s nose facing the water. Once I killed the lights, we immediately saw a broad display of stars, which became more vivid as our eyes adjusted to the darkness.

            “Wow,” Selva said, leaning forward for a better view.

            “That’s the Milky Way,” I said. I inched a hand along the seat to touch her hip.

            “Don’t.”

            I removed the cork from the wine bottle and tipped it up. It was fit for bathtub cleaner. “Nice bouquet,” I said, smacking my lips. “Want some?”

            “No,” Selva said. “I already know what it’s like.”

            The quarter-moon had not yet risen; stars glittered in the lake, and fireflies winked along the shore. “Better roll up your window,” I said. “I hear them coming.” Selva’s profile turned to face me in the darkness. “Mosquitoes,” I explained. “They own this pond.”

            “Did you bring repellent? Where will we change our clothes?”

            “In the cab, I guess,” I said. “Unless you want to donate blood.”

            Selva reached into the crackling paper bag and produced a pair of trunks, handing them to me. “You change outside,” she said. “I’ll change in here once you’re in the water.”

            “These are Adrian’s?” I peered at the trunks in the darkness; they were white trunks printed with huge purple chrysanthemums. “They look sort of florid.” I slipped my boots and socks off. “Just getting ready before I leap out into the bugs,” I explained. “I’ll take my shirt off, too, if you don’t mind. How is it you happen to own a suit, by the way? Since you don’t swim.”

            “Coincidence,” Selva said. “I’ve been determined lately to get over this thing I have about exposing my skin. So, I bought a suit. I’ve worn it at home but nowhere else. It’s a two-piece. It’s dinky. Adrian likes it.”

            “He’s seen you in it, then?”

            “Of course,” Selva said. “He’s my husband, after all. He knows all about my scar and my crappy brothers.” She paused. “He has full knowledge, Jonas. Unlike you.”

            I took this as my cue to enter the water. I jumped from the pickup, slammed the door, jerked my jeans off, and pulled on Adrian’s suit, which was too big in the waist. Then I popped the door open long enough to chuck the jeans inside, and turned and fled toward the lake, holding the trunks up with one hand. The boat ramp felt like broken pottery under my feet, so that I minced along, stumbling, waving my free hand against the mosquitoes. Behind me, in the pickup, I could hear Selva laughing. I ran out into the water until it was above my knees, then stumbled forward, held my breath, and fell in a great clumsy splash, the cool water closing above me as the black bubbles roared around my ears. After a few kicks, my feet sought the bottom and I stood up, head and chest out of the water, and turned to face the ramp. “Whoo-ooh!” I shouted, shaking my wet hair. “That was a rush!”

            I watched eagerly for Selva to step out of the truck. The light from the galaxy that spins us in its arms was enough to show the numbers on the license plate, but I could make out nothing of what was going on behind the windshield. After a while the door swung open and a pair of white legs emerged. “Jonas,” Selva said, “I’m having trouble with my top.”

            “Hallelujah!” I shouted. “There is a God!” She came down to the edge of the water wearing my shirt. “You can wade,” I said more calmly. “I don’t care if you get that shirt wet.”

            “How dark is it?” she asked. “Can you see me?”

            “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I can see you pretty well.” She stood holding the shirt together at the front with one hand and slapping mosquitoes with the other. “Come into the water,” I said. “I can’t see you then.” Slap, slap. “It’ll cool you off.” I moved back a little. “I’ll stay over here.”

            “Oh, hell.” Selva turned half around, peeled the shirt off quickly, and threw it back up onto the boat ramp. Then she waded into the water, held her nose as I’d done, and tipped carefully forward. As she did so—and before, as she’d half turned—I got a glimpse of a light area on her back that gleamed to match the swath of stars in the sky. Now her head popped up at a cautious distance from me. “Hi, Jonas,” she said. I saw the flash of her grin. “Did you like my titties?”

            “Oh, yes,” I said, my breath coming shallow and fast. “I liked them. I, uh— Could you stand up and turn around?”

            “You want to look at my back?” I stood motionless, ignoring the mosquitoes that bombed my head. “I don’t know, Jonas,” she demurred. “This water is delicious, don’t you think?”

            “Your scar— I didn’t see it very well, but it seemed almost to glow. Could you—?”

            “I’ll think about it,” she said. “This is my first time swimming, Jonas. Show me what to do. At a distance, I mean.”

            I am afraid of any water deeper than my head, but the bottom sloped easily and I demonstrated my inadequate sidestroke. Selva splashed about like an otter and within five minutes could swim as well as I can. Charmed and excited by the water, she laughed and chattered like a child; the effect was highly destructive of my peace of mind. In order to look away from her—for I had a sense of loss that threatened to make me weep—I turned my back and gazed up at the stars, inventing private constellations: the Raft, the Storm, the Continent of Useless Knowledge. I surveyed the eastern sky. “I think the moon is due to rise,” I said. “I’m exhausted now. I have to go to work.”

            “Party pooper,” Selva said. She rested in water to her chin, shivering. “I thought you didn’t care about your job.”

            “I changed my mind.”

            “I’ll come out if you’ll bring me that shirt,” she said. “I’m nervous about being naked in front of you.”

            I walked up onto the dry concrete, the water streaming from me, and retrieved the shirt; I carried it back to where she crouched in the water at the foot of the ramp. “Before the moon comes up,” I said, “please let me see your back by starlight.”

            “I don’t know.” She spread the dark shirt on the water. “It’s a scar, Jonas. It’s ugly. There’s nothing about it that should turn you on.”

            “I don’t need to be turned on. You do that anyway.”

            “All right, Jonas,” she said. “Go back toward the truck.” I walked out of the water; when I faced her again, Selva was standing hip deep, the shirt held to her chest. Slowly, without speaking, she turned around and lifted her wet hair.

            I gasped at what I saw. Imagine a woman’s body lit by starlight, ghostly white against the black water. The woman is slender and beautiful, but there is more, a tissue of the thinnest silk that has been dipped in phosphorescence so that it glows, not brightly or uniformly but with a faint and mottled light. This wet glowing gauze is laid across her back, adhering perfectly to every curve and ripple. Imagine further that its whorls of shadow, its blotches and bands of light, reflect the patterns overhead in the blue-black sky. And one thing further: think of her live breathing, and of the dark obscuring fall of her released hair.  Selva turned to face me. “I’m sorry I’m so ugly that it makes you cry,” she said.

            “Not ugly,” I croaked. “Oh, not ugly.” Just then a flash, like distant lightning, lit up the lake. I looked up. “Hey,” I said. “That was no firefly.”

            “A meteor. There’s another. Is the sky falling, Jonas?”

            “I don’t think so.” I looked up as a third streak parted the sky. “What is the date?” I asked.

            “July twenty-ninth, unless it’s after midnight.”

            “It’s the Delta Aquarids,” I said. “A meteor shower. We’re in luck.”

            Gazing upward, Selva drew the shirt on absent-mindedly, forgetting that a would-be lover was there to measure the lilt and bobble of her breasts. “A scar is a scar,” she said. “Tell me what you see on my back, if it it’s not pure ugliness.”

            “Light itself,” I said hoarsely. “Not light like the sun, but light in a drifting cloud: light before the world was made. I saw the woman who came before Eve.” Another meteor-flicker showed me her anxious face, unmindful of my gaze or praise. The mosquitoes were becoming painful. “Let’s get into the truck and watch these for a while,” I said. I went to the driver’s side of the pickup, turned my back to Selva, and let Adrian’s trunks slide wetly to the ground; I hung them on the mirror and began tugging my rough jeans over my tingling erection. “You’re just so goddamned beautiful and self-absorbed,” I said. “Sometimes I truly hate you.”

            “Well, that’s refreshing,” Selva said behind me. “It’s probably not a lie, at least.”

            I got into the cab, slammed the door, and began killing the mosquitoes that had chased me inside. Selva soon followed, her white legs a powerful presence in the darkness. I uncorked the wine and drank deeply of the bitter stuff; we both leaned forward and peered together through the top of the windshield. After a dozen ordinary streaks, one fantastic blue-white slowly-descending fireball lit up the lake and the picnic grounds like a magnesium flare, a meteor so stately and brilliant that it left a trail of visible smoke half across the sky.

            “Wow,” I whispered. “I haven’t seen anything like that since I was flying.”

            The quarter-moon lifted an eyebrow above the horizon, spoiling our free sky show. “See if my binoculars are in the glove box,” I said. “I want to show you something.”

            Selva got the binoculars and handed them to me; I aimed them at the moon and adjusted the eyepiece. “Did you ever do this?” I asked. “Look at the moon through a telescope or binoculars?”

            “I never have,” Selva said. “Isn’t that funny?”

            “A lot of people haven’t,” I said. “It’s something everyone should do at least once in a lifetime, that’s for sure.” I waited while the moon cleared the horizon, then handed the binoculars to Selva. “See what you think.”

            I fell silent, waiting. The chassis of the truck squeaked as she shifted her position. “Gosh,” she said at last. “It’s wonderful.”

            “Can you see any of the streaks? One of those streaked craters is Tycho and the other is Copernicus, but I can never remember which is which. I call ‘em Big Splat and Little Splat.”

            “I see them,” Selva said. “I wonder what it’s like for the astronauts to see them close up.”

            I took the binoculars and gazed long at the earth’s scarred twin. “If you were to look at Venus,” I said, “you’d see nothing but a cloudy smoothness. Which is more beautiful?”

            Selva held out her hand for another look. “Jonas,” she said after a long minute, “thank you for showing me this. Now, please listen to me. I am only a woman; I am not a phenomenon. My damage is not spectacular or scientifically meaningful. If I had my choice, I would be as plain and undistinguished as a loaf of bread. This mark makes me a freak, or possibly a trophy, I’m not sure which. What I’m sure of is that I’d rather be without it.” She replaced the binoculars in the glove compartment and closed it. “Take me home.”

            I started the truck with one foot on the brake so it wouldn’t roll into the water, and backed around and headed toward the chained entrance. “A person’s character is not like a token in a board game,” I said. “It’s not something handed to you at the beginning. You are who you become.”

            “Did I choose to be hit on the back by a ball of flaming tar?” Selva asked wearily. “Did I choose to be raped by men I had to live with, day after day and year after year? Beware, Jonas. You do not know even the beginning of my anger.”

            “I love you,” I said. “I’m helpless in that, so I must admit that some choices are inevitable to a degree.”

            “And I,” she said, “I have to hope for change in myself, though I don’t expect it. To tell the truth, I’m excited about my new life with Adrian.”

            “Lucky Adrian,” I said.

            “Poor Adrian,” Selva said.

(blank line)

203. The lights in the second-floor windows. . . .

            The lights in the second-floor windows blazed brighter than before. “He’s waiting up for you,” I said to Selva as I pulled into the driveway. “I bet he’s pissed.”

            “No he isn’t,” she said. “He’s studying for his bar exam, that’s all.” She folded her blouse and put it in the grocery sack along with the suit top. I reached out the window, unhooked Adrian’s trunks from the mirror and handed them to her. “Do you need the shirt?” she asked.

            “It’s a hundred degrees in that cellar,” I said. “I always take my shirt off down there anyway.”

            “I’ll get it back to you,” she said. “Thanks, Jonas. The swim was lovely. I’ll tell Adrian you were a gentleman.”

            “Oh, God,” I said. “Tell him anything but that. Got a hug for me?”

            “No.”

            “Good night, then.”

            She was already moving toward the steps. I watched her disappear inside; then, instead of backing away, I uncorked the wine and drank the last of it. I was still sitting there, eyes closed, my forehead against the wheel, the engine idling and my foot resting on the brake, when someone climbed in and the passenger door banged violently. I jerked myself awake, thinking I had a fight on my hands, but it was Selva again. She was crying and fingering her lip. “Go, Jonas,” she said. “Go! Go!”

            I put the truck in reverse and backed down the driveway. “What’s the matter? Did he hit you? Want me to hit him back?”

            “Go! Take me somewhere. I want to kill him.”

            “I have to go to work.”

            “Take me to work, then.”

            I drove off a bit confusedly, looking in the rear-view mirror for signs of Adrian. “I guess it’s only natural that he’d be angry,” I said, hoping to soothe her.

            “Shut up!” she shouted. “If you don’t shut up right now, I’ll jump out of this truck!”

            I drove down F Street to 17th, north to Holdredge, east to 27th, north to Cornhusker. By the time I reached the soybean factory, Selva had calmed a little. In the parking lot, I cut off the engine and squeezed her hand. “Come inside with me if you like,” I said. “As you know, it’s not terribly pleasant.”

            “I don’t want company,” Selva said. “I have to think about my options here.”

            “I’ll leave the key in the truck,” I said. “You can lock the doors from the inside. If you have to go somewhere, I can hitch a ride downtown in the morning.” I leaned across to kiss her cheek, but she inclined her head in such a way as to prevent me. I kissed the air instead. “You know where to find me if you need to talk.”

            “I’m not talking,” Selva said. “Thanks anyway.”

            “See you.” I got out, closed the door, glanced back inside, and removed the carton of Billy-pieces from the pickup box. Selva’s back was shaking with a grief she’d never feel for me; I reached down inside the carton to touch the cool packages—they were nicely thawed—and then carried them toward my pit, my hole, my dungeon, my place of work. When I fed them through the grate in the hour before dawn, they clanked with unusual violence as the chain ate bone.

(blank line)

204. Selva Andersen was gone by morning.

            Selva Andersen was gone by morning. The sun-warmed cab of the pickup reeked of semen; I rolled down the window, cursing. Adrian had found her and they’d made it up right there on the seat. I wondered if any of the night-shift guys had been watching. “Cunt,” I swore; “Fox-faced slut. God-damned misused good-for-nothing—” It was no help thinking of hard words for Selva. I felt pity for her. All the same, it’s a good thing nobody pulled in front of me on the way to my apartment. As I passed F Street, I glanced eastward to see if the orange Volvo sat in the driveway. All I could see was the enormous maple, the tree that changed so famously in the fall.

            Julia was still at home. I marched down the steps, grabbed her around the waist, and hauled her into the bedroom. “Jonas!” she protested as I dragged down her panties. “Let me turn off the coffee—”

            The coffeepot had boiled dry by the time I’d done with her. I climbed down off her and went into the kitchen and took it off the stove myself, running a blast of cold water in it to kill the smoke. When I went back into the bedroom, Julia was sitting up. “Whew!” she said. “That was like old times. Jonas, I was beginning to think you had forgotten me.”

            “Nothing like being investigated for murder to take one’s mind off sex,” I said.

            Julia reached out to handle my half-erect cock. “Jonas,” she said, “you didn’t really kill that old man, did you?”

            “I hit him pretty hard,” I admitted. “If he’s dead, he must’ve dragged himself off somewhere first.”

            “Honey, you know I’d lie for you,” Julia said, “but if that’s what you want, you’ll have to tell me what to say.”

            “When they ask you, tell the truth as far as you know it,” I said. “I’m starting to think prison might be just the place for me.” Julia’s manipulation was having some effect; after a month of guilty abstinence, the lower part of my body was ready to rejoin the human race. I placed one finger between her breasts and pushed her onto her back. “I’ll be nicer this time,” I said. “I might even take my socks off and get in bed with you.”

            “Looks like I’m going to be late for work,” she said cheerfully. “Leave ‘em on if you like. I’ll have to wash the sheets now anyway.”

            This time I didn’t close my eyes and pretend Julia was Selva. I kept them open and fucked her as herself. Because I’d had so little of her—none since the ‘accident’—her pregnant body was new to me. I explored her with my soybean-doughy hands, kissing away the smudges as they appeared. She was like some oversized medical demonstration, with nipples the size of pink soft walnuts and a cunt that could’ve accepted a stallion’s penis. It appreciated mine—if you rub one side, the other comes over to see what’s happening—and I played in her like a minnow in a lake, shoving her great breasts around, patting her gently-mounded belly that was tight like a drum. As I came again, she watched my face, blushing; afterward, a tender expression settled in her eyes.

            “That was good, hunh.”

            “Yes,” I said. “It needed taken care of. What about you?”

            “I’m fine,” she said. “Jonas, I missed you. I have something I want to talk to you about.”

            “Go ahead,” I said.

            “D’you think this date with Alys Culhane is an audition?”

            I’d hoped she was going to discuss the abortion. “Could be,” I said. “Why not? Maybe she’s looking for a bass player.”

            “Mark wouldn’t cut it with her band,” Julia said. “I might. Do you remember when we sang together? Did I sound good?”

            “You always sound good,” I said. “Not like her, though. She’s got a voice that could knock over an elephant.”

            “You haven’t heard me lately. I’ve been giving it all I’ve got. I sound mean, Jonas.”

            I yawned. “Better get a good drummer,” I said. “I’m not coming with you.”

            “Jonas, you have to.”

            “The chief of detectives told me not to leave Lincoln.”

            “Surely he’d let you go for that one night.”

            “Well, I’m not. You can do this without me.”

            “Oh, Jonas! Now I’m sad. You’ll miss my biggest triumph.”

            “I’ll miss getting circumcised with a machete,” I said. “I’m afraid of Brenda.”

            “Brenda likes you,” Julia said. “She just can’t quite admit it to herself.”

            “If Brenda likes me, that detective loves me,” I said. “Forget it. I’m not coming, that’s all.” I yawned again. “The boys will back you up,” I said. “If you get offered the job, you can’t take me with you anyway.”

            I shortly fell asleep. When I awoke, I found a rosebud sitting in a water glass on the kitchen table. Under it was a note. I love you, it said. After you shower, could you please wash the sheets? The laundry soap is under the kitchen sink.

            I went to the refrigerator, giving the note a wide berth, and got out a beer. Julia had plans she wasn’t telling me about. It made me even more determined not to go to Omaha.