He would kiss her and tell her how much he loved her before he took her out of the chair. There would be only a small lamp burning. She would nod and smile, holding out her empty glass, and he would hurry to make her another drink. He would bring it to her and sit beside her on the bed until she was ready, and then he would lift her out of the chair and put her on the bed and pull the covers up over her, so that she was not exposed, and undress quickly in one small dark corner of the room, and go to her, naked and fully engorged, and spread her thin withered thighs and get in between them and try to give her all the love he could feel.

It was dirty, dangerous work, and there was no way to get out of it, because once it started you were locked into a clock you had to punch into for forty hours a week, and that left no room for looking for other jobs, and Tiny never expected that his life would merit more than this anyway. He believed in Social Security and he believed that he would live a long and healthy life and he believed that his job was a form of security as solid as anything anybody could ever hope for. Sometimes he longed to drive the forklifts. Sometimes he longed to be the foreman over the assembly line where fifty people put stoves together and drilled holes with drills and inserted screws with air-driven screwdrivers and sent them on down the line, because the press department was too loud for talk and almost too loud for thought, but Tiny had only two thoughts anyway and they were, Lord, I love her, Kentucky Tavern.