Afterward, lying in her bed and listening to my own heartbeat, I had a moment of utter loneliness and desolation. I felt as though I had taken the cover off a bottomless well. I reached over and laid a hand on her flank, and the physical contact cut the thread of my mood.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hello.”

“What are you thinking?”

She laughed. “Nothing very romantic. I was trying to guess what my sponsor’s going to say.”

“Do you have to tell her?”

“I don’t have to do anything, but I will tell her. ‘Oh, by the way, I hopped into bed with a guy who’s eight days sober.’ “

“That’s a mortal sin, huh?”

“Let’s just say it’s a no-no.”

“What’ll she give you? Six Our Fathers?”

She laughed again. She had a good laugh, full and hearty. I’d always liked it.

“She’ll say, ‘Well, at least you didn’t drink. That’s the important thing.’ And she’ll say, ‘I hope you enjoyed it.’ “

“Did you?”

“Enjoy it?”

“Yeah.”

“Hell, no. I was faking orgasm.”

“Both times, huh?”

“You betcha.” She drew close to me, put her hand on my chest. “You’ll stay over, won’t you?”

“What would your sponsor say?”

“Probably that I might as well hang for a sheep as a lamb. Oh, shit, I almost forgot.”

“Where are you going?”

“Gotta make a phone call.”

“You’re actually calling your sponsor?”

She shook her head. She’d put a robe on and now she was paging through a small address book. She dialed a number and said, “Hi, this is Jan. You weren’t sleeping, were you? Look, this is out of left field, but does the word Ricone mean anything to you?” She spelled it. “I thought it might be a dirty word or something. Uh-huh.” Then she listened for a moment and said, “No, nothing like that. I’m doing crossword puzzles in Sicilian, that’s all. On nights when I can’t sleep. Listen, you can only spend so much time reading the Big Book.”

She finished the conversation, hung up and said, “Well, it was a thought. I figured if it was a dialect or an obscenity it might not be in the dictionary.”

“What obscenity did you think it might be? And when did the thought happen to cross your mind?”

“None of your business, wiseass.”

“You’re blushing.”

“I know, I can feel it. That’ll teach me to try to help a friend solve a murder.”

“No good deed goes unpunished.”

“That’s what they say. Martin Albert Ricone and Charles Otis Jones? Are those the names he used?”

“Owen. Charles Owen Jones.”

“And you think it means something.”

“It has to mean something. Even if he’s a lunatic, anything that elaborate would have to mean something.”

“Like Fort Wayne and Fort Smith?”