She said: “I’ve bout had it with your goddamn mouth.”

“Jam it,” I said.

“Kiss my ass,” she said.

“Make it bare,” I said, hoping she would, but she didn’t, and we walked off in different directions.

I didn’t know why something that started off feeling so good had to wind up feeling so bad. Love was a big word and it covered a lot of territory. You could spend your whole life chasing after it and wind up with nothing, be an old bitter guy with long nose and ear hair and no teeth, hanging out in bars looking for somebody your age, but the chances of success went down then. After a while you got too many strikes against you.

I didn’t know what to do, where to go. We were miles and miles from any town, anybody who might have flat-fixer services and could perhaps send a tow truck. I could see myself walking for days, sleeping in the ditches. I knew the first man who came along would pick her up, but I doubted that the first woman who came along would pick me up. I turned around and looked at her. Sheena Baby was getting smaller in the distance with each step, and I could see that fine ass she had wobbling. I knew she’d wobble it harder when she heard something coming down the road. She wouldn’t even have to stick out her thumb since she already had plenty of other stuff sticking out, and I couldn’t see myself doing without her for the rest of my life. I’d finally found the one I wanted, and now she didn’t want me. I knew I’d done it to myself, staying up all hours of the night playing Assorted Golden Hits and cooking french fries at two a.m., and letting the garbage pile up in the broom closet, not keeping my toenails cut short enough and scratching her legs with them at night in my sleep. It looked like when you first met somebody everything was just hunky-dory, and then you got to know each other. You found out that in spite of all her apparent beauty she had a little nasty-looking wart on her ass or she’d had six toes when she was born and they’d just clipped it off and then you got to wondering about genetics and progeny. You woke up in the morning before she did and leaned over and smelled her breath and said, Jesus Christ what the hell did you eat? Stuff like that broke the illusion, and formed opinions were changed when you really got to know somebody, when you lived with her and saw her in the morning and noticed that the backs of her thighs had little ripples of fat on them.