I didn’t ask where the kids were. I didn’t want to seem accusatory. I didn’t want to seem drunk, but I was. I’d been in there for four hours. I was on my way to try and weave my key into the ignition. Everything that might be said would be forgotten the next morning. Just a black hole with her somewhere standing in it, a picture of her face to rock to sleep against your pillow.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey.”

“You leaving?”

“Me? Well, yeah, I think so. What you up to?”

“Oh, nothing. Just out here looking for somebody to fuck. Right?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I am. Fucking everybody I can. You know how that goes, trying to fuck everybody you can.”

I didn’t say anything, so she went on by herself.

“Yeah, I’m trying to get enough together to have a gangbang about midnight if I can. If I can find enough of them still sober enough to fuck. A lot of men have that problem, you know. Start drinking beer about nine o’clock in the morning and drink all day and then have a bad case of the limpdick about dark.”

“You doing okay?” I said.

“Nah. Ain’t getting enough dick. This one of your hangouts, huh?”

“I come here sometimes.”

“I bet there’s some real sluts in here. It must be.”

“You seem to be in here.”

“Yeah, I just got here, though.”

“Where’s the kids?”

“None of your fucking business. Where’s my money?”

“What money?”

“Oh. You ain’t got my letter from my lawyer yet?”

“No.”

“You’ll get it tomorrow, probably. He mailed it yesterday. I hope you’re ready to fork over your alimony payment of three hundred and twenty-five dollars.”

“Three twenty-five? I thought it was one seventy-five.”

“You get to pay the lawyer fees. He don’t like waiting on his money. You’re paying him a hundred and fifty for five months. Then you can go back to one seventy-five but after that I’m going to ask the judge to raise it back to three twenty-five since I ain’t getting enough with two kids to feed and a house payment to make. You fucked anybody in here tonight?”

I just looked at her for a minute.

“Why does there have to be all this ugliness? Why do you have to act like this? Do you hate me that bad?”

“You goddamn right I do. And I’m gonna make you pay for every night I have to stay by myself.”

“I don’t have that kind of money.”

“You better shit it then. Your mama said you’d been painting houses.”

“Well. Some.”

“Well, the kids ain’t asked about you. I told them you left us. You better paint plenty of houses is all I can say.”

“I’m not working that much. I’m trying to write, too.”