She didn’t say anything for a while. I stopped a mile or two down the road and got us another beer from the trunk. I handed her one and she took it silently. Owls were hooting out there in the dark beside the road. She opened the beer, lit a cigarette, and just sat drinking and blowing smoke out the window.

Finally she said: “Next time we’ll get us a room.”

Right, I thought. Next time. Nah. There wouldn’t be a next time.

The lights were off at the house. She’d even cut the carport light off. Easing in, or trying to, I bumped into things. There wasn’t even a lamp on. And then suddenly there was, with her hand on it, and the quick furious anger all over her face.

“Where you been?” she said. “Riding around,” I muttered. “You know what time it is?”

I was heading into the bedroom with my shirt already unbuttoned, but I stopped and looked back at her.

“No. What time is it?”

She tapped her foot on the floor and reached for her cigarettes.

“You can’t keep on doing me like this,” she said.

I was tired and I didn’t want to hear it. All I wanted to do was close my eyes and try to sleep a little before the alarm went off.

“Okay,” I said. “Okay. Now please let me go to sleep.”

I left her in there, smoking, tapping her foot. I went into the dark bedroom, where my baby son was sprawled in sleep in the middle of our bed, and I took my clothes off, lay down beside him, touched his hair and the side of his face. I loved him. I knew what I was doing to him. He never moved. I thought of how horrible my life was and then I closed my eyes. Just before I drifted off to sleep I was vaguely aware of her getting into bed. She didn’t speak, and the next thing I knew the alarm was going off.

I decided not to go to work that day. I have the kind of job where I don’t have to be there every day, and people working for me who can take care of things. I wanted to go fishing. I wanted to be on a boat in a lake with a pole in my hand and crickets or minnows in a bucket or a box and a cooler full of cold beer to help me think over everything I needed to think over.