“I’m glad to hear it,” Dino said. “Let me tell you something somebody told me when I was young and single. This was a man who had been married three times. He said to me, ‘Dino, tell you what you do: When you get married, you keep a piece of chalk in your bedside table drawer, and every time you make love to your wife, you take out the chalk and make a hash mark on the wall. Then, after you’ve been married for a year, throw away the chalk and keep an eraser in your bedside drawer, and every time you make love, take out the eraser and erase a hash mark.’”

“What was his point?” Stone asked.

“His point was this: ‘It’ll take you ten years to erase all the hash marks.’”

Stone laughed in spite of himself.

“So, pal, my point is, if you’re going to get married, you’d better have something going on in the relationship besides sex.”

“I knew that,” Stone said.

“No, you didn’t,” Dino sighed. “You still don’t.”

“No, I do, I really do.”

“Tell me this,” Dino said. “What makes you think she’d marry you?”

“Well . . .”

“You think all she’s looking for is a great lay? Not that you’re all that great.”

“I could offer her a pretty good life,” Stone said.

“Yeah, sure. You’re traipsing all over the country, doing this very strange but oddly entertaining work. You think she’s going to like that? You going to take her along when you have to drop everything and go to Podunk, Somewhere?”

“Why not?”

“Because women get rooted in their homes. I guarantee you, a month after you’re married, you’re going to find that your house has been totally redecorated.”

“I like the way my house is decorated,” Stone said. “I did it myself.”

“Yeah, but Callie doesn’t like it.”

“She hasn’t even seen it.”

“You think that matters? She doesn’t like it because you decorated it, dumbo. She won’t think of it as her home until she’s changed all the wallpaper and carpets and had a big garage sale and sold everything you love most in the house.”

“You really know how to make marriage attractive, Dino.”

“I’m telling you the truth, here.”

“Did Mary Ann redecorate your place?”

“No, she sold my place one day when I was at work, and I had nothing to say about it. Then we bought one she liked.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“This conversation is making me tired,” Stone said.

“I don’t blame you. Reality is always tiring.”

Stone drained the last of the wine from his glass. “I’m going to bed.”

“Good idea. The very least you should do about this marriage idea is to sleep on it. For about a month.”

“I think I could sleep for a month,” Stone said, yawning. “I could do that.”