Three hours later they reached the Dirty Shame. Hooligan paid Henry five hundred dollars in cash for the evening’s work and bought them each a drink. Arriaga and Lacey appeared and joined them for a second round. Sometime after midnight Hooligan drove Henry to his apartment house. Henry entered to find Claire sitting up in her nightgown, wide awake, waiting for him. She said nothing as he stood the rifle in the corner, sat down beside her on the rehabilitated sofa and slipped an arm around her bare shoulders.

I’m home, Honeydew. She said nothing. He felt his sheepish, guilty grin slipping away. I’ve been working, he said. Earning money. Dinero. Moola. Frogskins. She said nothing. He pulled a wad of bills from his pocket, placed it in her palm and folded her fingers over it. Give that to your mother, he said.

She looked at the four century notes, the three or four twenties, the fives and ones. She crushed the bills into a ball and put them in the big ceramic ashtray on the apple-box coffee table before them. Two of Henry’s cigar butts rested in the ashtray, together with matchbooks labeled Pandora’s Box and the Dirty Shame.

Say something, he demanded.

She struck a match and applied the clear yellow flame to the crinkled pile of paper money. The finely engraved, labor-ennobled, leathery-textured legal tender began to burn, slow but willing. Henry watched.

I risked my life for that money.

She made no immediate reply except to strike a second match and encourage the fire. She said, I know what Hooligan’s business is. You don’t have to tell me.

They watched the flames creep over the noble faces of Washington, Lincoln, Jackson, Franklin.

It’s only marijuana, he pleaded. No proof yet it does anybody any harm. Good placebo anyhow. He pulled a plastic Baggie from his jacket. Brought a sample home for you. For you, Honeydew. You like the stuff don’t you? Seems like I see you smoke it now and then.

She said nothing. They watched the flames continue their patient consumption of his earnings.

That’s more than I get in four weeks of unemployment compensation, he complained. Finally she looked at him. Henry, are you really as stupid as you pretend? How stupid is that? You really don’t understand what I’m angry about? I guess not. You don’t like Hooligan? The stink of burning money passed his nose, floated on. Is that it? I don’t care about Hooligan, I care about you. You mean—? Keep trying. You mean that if something happens to me, if I got killed so to speak, you’d never speak to me again?

She lifted her arms and hung her interlocked hands around his red skinny vulturine neck. From a distance of six inches she peered into his eyes: soft gray-blue the color of smoked sapphire peering into squinty bloodshot gooseberry green. Looking very serious, she touched his lips with her lips. She licked the lobe of his left ear with her tongue, veiling his face with the fall of her hair. Her pink-tipped breasts within the filmy stuff of her gown pressed upon his white chest.