“It makes me sick,” he said.

“It should make everybody sick.” West could not look at food.

“Who do you think’s doing it?” He dipped a bouquet of french fries into a red puddle.

“Maybe a sh’im.” She was soaked in cold sweat. Her hair was wet around her face and neck, as if she’d just been in a foot pursuit.

“Huh?” Raines glanced up at her, biting into his dripping burger.

“She-him. Woman one night, man the next, depending on the mood,” she said.

“Oh. Like you.” He reached for the dish of mayonnaise.

“Goddamn it.” West shoved her plate away. “I must be about to start.”

The first twangs on electric guitars shattered the din, and sticks beat-beat and beat-beat-beat. Cymbals crashed and crashed as Axel snaked his foot around Jon’s ankle and thought about Brazil for the millionth time this day.

Packer was thinking about Brazil, too, as the editor carried Dufus out the back door like a small, squirming football, headed for the same Japanese maple. Dufus had to go in the same place, get used to it, and be able to find his smells. It didn’t matter that the tree was in the hinterlands and that it had started to rain. Packer dropped his wife’s wall-eyed dog in the same bald spot next to the same gnarled root. Packer was out of breath, watching Dufus curtsey to the Queen.

“Why don’t you lift your leg like a man,” Packer muttered as bulging eyes watched him, speckled pink nose twitching. “Sissy,” Packer said.

The worn-out editor’s pager had vibrated earlier this evening while he was mowing the grass on his vacation day. It had been Panesa calling to tell him that the mayor had admitted that even he wouldn’t drive downtown at night right now! Jesus living God, this was unbelievable. Surely the paper was well on its way to winning a Pulitzer for a series that made a difference in society, one that changed history. Why the hell did this wait to happen when Packer was out of the newsroom? He’d been there thirty-two years. The moment he decided to put life in perspective, ward off that heart attack perched outside the window of his existence, Andy Brazil showed up.

Now it was run-through-the-yard time to get Dufus’s bowels wound up that they might unleash what, in Packer’s mind, should have been a humiliation to any creature, except maybe a small domestic cat. Dufus would not chase Packer or come, and this was not new. The editor sat on the back porch steps while his wife’s dog chewed mulch until it was time to drop his niggling gifts. Packer sighed and got up. He walked back into the air-conditioned house, Dufus on his heels.

“There’s my good little boy,” Mildred cooed as the dog hopped and licked until she picked him up and rocked him in loving arms.

“Don’t mention it,” Packer said, falling into his recliner chair, flicking on television.

He was still sitting there hours later, eating chicken nuggets, and dipping them in Roger’s barbecue sauce. He loudly dug into a big bag of chips, swiping them in sauce, too. After several Coronas with lime, he had forgotten about the window and the heart attack perched beyond it. Mildred was watching Home for the Holidays again, because she thought it was their life. Go figure. In the first place Packer did not play the organ and she did not wear a wig or smoke, and they did not live in a small town. Their daughter had never gotten fired, at least not from an art gallery. That was one place she had never worked, probably because she was color-blind. Nor was their son gay that Packer knew of or cared to know of and any intimations to the contrary by his wife went into the Bermuda Triangle of their marital news hole. The editor didn’t listen and the story didn’t run. The End.