For answer she reaches out and takes my hand and puts it on her breast. She rubs the hand over it for a moment and then slips it inside her blouse. I lean over and kiss her and push my fingers down into the cup of her bra. She slides a hand up my leg and I break away long enough to set the whiskey on the table, then roll on top of her.

“Cut the light out,” she says.

“What?”

“Cut the light out.”

I get up and pull off my shirt and flick off the light and we are left in the blue glow from the TV. Some massacre in a foreign country is being documented on the television screen: swollen bodies, murdered livestock in the streets. Black bloodstains on shattered brick walls. I push her shirt up and reach behind her and unsnap her bra, the heavy round meat easing into my hands. I kiss at her with an urgency she doesn’t seem to share. I rub at the waistband of her pants and run my hands all over her. But there is no feeling in her kisses. She’s tense. I twist her thick nipples between my fingers and after five minutes I quit. She has worked her way upright in the bed and she sits now with her nice knockers poking out from underneath the twisted entanglements of her shirt and bra, looking not at me or the TV or her clothes but the wall.

I sit up and swing my legs to the floor and find my cigarettes. I light one and get my shirt off the floor.

“You ready to run me back to the club?” I say. “There’s no need in us staying over here.” Something is wrong with her. She doesn’t even get excited. It’s no wonder her husband has left her. She’s cold as a fish.

“That’s his pickup,” she says.

“What?”

“That’s Roland’s pickup outside. He’s got some woman over here. In one of these rooms.” She looks at me. “Maybe right next to us.”

I hate myself for being this way. For being so desperate. I already knew how it was going to turn out. I knew it would be exactly like this.

“Well, so what?” I say. “If he’s screwing around on you, what are you so worried about?”

“I’m not worried,” she says.

“The hell you ain’t.” I stand up and pull on my shirt. I know I need to get myself out of this room and away from her. It’s not too late to go back to the bar and try to meet somebody else. Anybody will be better than her. Even the fat ones will be better than her. At least I can have a good time with them. They don’t have problems. They don’t waste the nights. “You’re afraid he’ll see you with me,” I say.