She gets up and goes back over to her dressing table. She picks up her brush. I can hear her raking and tearing it through her hair. It sounds like she’s ripping it out by the roots. I have to stay here and listen to it. I can understand why people jump off bridges.

“You want a drink?” I say. “I can mix you up a little bourbon and Coke.”

“I’ve got some,” she says, and she lifts her can to show me. Diet Coke. At least a six-pack a day. The refrigerator’s crammed full of them. I can hardly get to my beer for them. I think they’re only one calorie or something. She thinks she’s fat and that’s the reason I don’t pay enough attention to her, but it isn’t.

She’s been hurt. I know she has. You can lie around the house all your life and think you’re safe. But you’re not. Something from outside or inside can reach out and get you. You can get sick and have to go to the hospital. Some nut could walk into the station one night and kill us all in our beds. You can read about things like that in the paper any morning you want to. I try not to think about it. I just do my job and then come home and try to stay in the house with her. But sometimes I can’t.

Last week, I was in this bar in town. I’d gone down there with some of these boys we’re breaking in, rookies. Just young boys, nineteen or twenty. They’d passed probation and wanted to celebrate, so a few of us older guys went with them. We drank a few pitchers and listened to the band. It was a pretty good band. They did a lot of Willie and Waylon stuff. I’m thinking about all this while she’s getting up and moving around the room, looking out the windows.

I don’t go looking for things—I don’t—but later on, well, there was this woman in there. Not a young woman. Younger than me. About forty. She was sitting by herself. I was in no hurry to go home. All the boys had gone, Bradshaw, too. I was the only one of the group left. So I said what the hell. I went up to the bar and bought two drinks and carried them over to her table. I sat down with them and I smiled at her. And she smiled back. In an hour we were over at her house.