Marlene put the cordless back on the charger and rolled out of the bed. When she stretched, she felt a slight throbbing in her thigh. Hiking her nightgown, she noticed a bruise in the shape of a man’s thumbprint beginning to form right on the muscle. “Shit,” she said, rubbing at the bruise as if it would go away. She would have to put some ice on it and hope that it went down, if not away. It was way too hot to spend the next few nights sleeping in full-length pajamas.

Walking as if she was still asleep, Marlene made her way into the bathroom. She looked in the mirror and wasn’t pleased at what she saw. Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot from drinking and there was a nasty-looking web of saliva that had dried on her cheek. Her hair was a mess, too, because she had forgotten to wrap it the night before. She ran her fingers through her hair to untangle it and watched tiny flakes of sand fall into the sink.

Paul leapt up and nearly fell off the couch when his cell phone rang in his ear. He had been a fool for sleeping with the thing right by his head, but he wanted to be able to hear the alarm when it went off. Seeing that it was one o’clock and he had set it for eleven, it hadn’t done him much good.

Paul looked around, trying to pinpoint the noisy device and was immediately sorry that he had moved at all. His head felt like there was a game of Pong going on inside it and he was losing. Using more touch than sight, he located the phone under the cushion he had been lying on.

“Who this?” he said, not bothering to hide the fact that he was pissed off for being awoken.

“Paul, I know you can answer your phone better than that,” Marlene said.

“Hey, baby,” he said and yawned.

“Sounds like you had a rough night.”

“A little something. You know when me and this fool get together we try to drink up everything in the place. We didn’t get in until like four or five.”

“The pool hall stays open late these days, huh?” she asked sarcastically.

Paul, immediately sensing that she was trying to trip him up, got his wits together. “We didn’t stay at the pool hall all night. We went out for drinks.”

“Yeah, how much they charging for drinks in Exit these days?” she asked, letting him know that trying to think up a lie would be useless.

“You spying on me, Mar?”

“No, I’m not spying on you. But when I try calling my man’s house for over a half hour and don’t get an answer, it makes me inclined to wonder.”

“I didn’t answer my phone because I’m not home,” he said.