“What ‘Oh, God’? What are you talking about, Evelyn? Sex is such a bad thing that the mere mention of the word ‘fuck’ and you start oh, God-ing all over the place? I want to fuck you, Evelyn.”

“Oh, God, Arthur.”

“There you go again.”

They were married on the third weekend of their whirlwind courtship.

The sex was awful.

The problem was Evelyn. She didn’t like having sex. At least not with Arthur.

“You’re perpetually in heat, Arthur.”

“You mean I’m hot to trot,” said Arthur, snickering.

“I mean you always want to do it and I don’t think it’s funny.”

Arthur had turned off quite a few women in his day. But then maybe Evelyn found sex with any male repugnant. Maybe it was having intercourse that disgusted Evelyn. Maybe she just didn’t like being made love to, period. That wasn’t an inconceivable speculation. And then one late afternoon when Arthur and Evelyn had finished “a little matinee humpty-dumpty,” as Arthur liked to call it, an unusually bold and supine Evelyn Lounge Durch told her husband, “You know something, Arthur, you can’t do it worth a damn.”

“Do what?”

“IT!”

Arthur took immediate umbrage. “How the hell would you know, Evelyn?”

“You’re a sexual loser, Arthur.”

“I repeat, how would you know?”

“You’re a cold fish, a dickless wonder, Arthur,” baited a suddenly perky Evelyn Lounge Durch.

“Okay, what’s going on, Evelyn?”

“You’re one step up from a eunuch, Arthur.”

“You don’t even know what a eunuch is.”

“Yes, I do.”

“No you don’t, you stupid bitch.”

The stupid bitch part was the provocation she was looking for. She wiggled out from under her husband, scrambled off the couch and stood up, straightened her clothes and, with her hands on her hips, said, “Stupid bitch, huh?”

Evelyn stomped out of the apartment.

Arthur yelled, “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass.”

Evelyn Lounge Durch didn’t hear him. She was already on the elevator. She returned for her clothes a week later when Arthur wasn’t home.

Billy Constable was stunned.

“Yes, that’s right, I want you to come and work for me,” repeated Sonny Lieberman. “I’m starting a sports promotion company. I’m going to be the next Tex Rickard in this town. Do you know who Tex Rickard was?”

“No, sir.”

“Tex Rickard was a fight promoter who worked primarily here in New York City. Rickard was a genius. He was also a tricky son of a bitch. Like for instance, Rickard used the race card to promote the sellout Johnson-Jeffries fight.”

Billy told Mr. Lieberman he didn’t know what the race card meant.

“White against black. That’s what it means. Black Johnson and white Jeffries. The fight drew a really big crowd. Everybody wanted to see the white guy beat the shit out of the black guy. You Southerners know about that stuff, right?”

Billy had no idea what Mr. Lieberman was talking about, but he nodded anyway.