“I just wanted—” he said, trying to turn the papers with his free hand, “—to, you know…”

“It’s so generous,” said Janis. “We thought you’d fight the alimony, what with your, you know, success, but—”

Now it was Todd’s turn not to listen. Whereas the aforesaid Todd Milstead agrees to pay the agreed portion of his income to the aforesaid Janis Milstead… said portion not to exceed… for the period of…

Todd let the papers fall.

“Oh God,” he said out loud.

“Are you okay?” said Janis.

“Yeah,” said Todd. “Never better.”

A thought occurred to him.

“Janis,” he said. “When you said ‘we’ just then…”

“Yes?” said Janis, for the first time wary.

“Who did you mean?”

Janis exhaled. “I suppose there’s no harm in telling you now,” she said. “I kind of think you guessed anyway.”

Todd, thought Todd, I’m shacking up with the Dyke with the Bike.

“Todd,” said Janis, “Joe asked me to marry him.”

Todd felt like he’d been hit in the head with a brick.

“Joe?” he said.

“Joe Hines,” said Janis.

“Joe Hines? Joe my old pal Hines?”

“The very same,” said Janis, and laughed. “God, he was so nervous about asking me out. He kept saying, I hope Todd doesn’t find out, and what do you think Todd is going to say?”

“Joe,” said Todd. He was all out of anything now.

“So, Todd,” said Janis, a note of playfulness in her voice. “What do you say?”

A thousand replies went through Todd’s mind. Most of them had the word fuck in them. Todd knew when he was beaten.

“I hope you’ll both be very happy together,” he said.

*  *  *

After a fretful hour going through the divorce papers with a fine-toothed comb, Todd gave up on looking for loopholes and instead turned his attention to wondering what the fucking fuck is happening to my fucking brain, which seemed to be a more pressing matter.

He’d seen Janis at that truck stop. He’d seen the bike, and he’d seen the woman give him the finger. Then there were Behm’s photographs. All right, there was something wrong with the damn pictures, but Behm had seen something, hadn’t he? Just like I saw something, thought Todd.

And the call from Coughlan last night. Todd was now pretty sure that hadn’t happened. Maybe it was the booze, he thought. But he doubted it.

He made a call.

“Todd!” said Nora. She sounded ecstatic to hear from him. “How’s it going?”

“Great,” said Todd. “Can’t wait to get back on the road.”

“And we are in the process of scheduling those dates for you,” said Nora, perhaps a little too quickly. “Although I must say, the book is doing so well, it seems to be quite happy without—”

Without me, thought Todd. Join the club, book.