I got frisked while she was putting her clothes on and she was fully dressed by the time they decided to shine their lights on her. They weren’t pissed that I had the gun, they were just pissed that I’d messed up their dope surveillance, and when they went to looking through her purse I had a few bad moments, but it turned out that she’d wisely hidden her joints inside her panties, and being the Southern gentlemen they were, they weren’t about to ask her to disrobe again. They told me they’d appreciate the shit out of it if I’d find someplace else to park because they were working on busting some people right there and they were sure I didn’t want to be mixed up in it. I told them Nosir, Budweiser was my only vice. We booked on out of there, and I think it was like 3:47 when I got on in home, after we’d finished with a motel room we’d used for twenty-four minutes.

I got on my forklift the next day and drove it all around the plant. We had to load a bunch of dishwashers and it took all day. I thought I never would get out of there. But finally the day ended and I just had enough time to get to the Little League game, where all the upstanding other fathers were standing around watching their kids swat, and there I sat, mired down in a lawn chair, digging out quarters for Cokes and popcorn, getting depressed when my own small slugger struck out or missed making a catch. It was a hard life, and I didn’t know if I was going to be able to keep on living it.

My wife came over and sat down next to me and said: “What you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“You want to take the kids out to eat after the game?’’

“Not really.”

“What you got planned?”

“Nothing.”

“You don’t enjoy this, do you?”

“Not really.”

She looked at me. “You hate being married, don’t you?”

“Why do you say that?”

She looked back at the game. “Because. I can tell.”

I watched them play for a while. Mothers were yelling. Once in a while a pop fly would sail over the fence. One lad got hit in the eye and started crying and had to be replaced. They gave him a towel with some ice in it, and somebody else held his hand and bought him a snow cone.

“You want a divorce?” she said.

“Not really.”

“Well,” she said. “I hate you’re so unhappy.”

Then she got up and left me sitting there.

We happened again about a week later. I’d had two beers and she came in. She didn’t even mess around with the jukebox, she just made a beeline for me and got me by the arm.

“Come on over to my house,” she said.