“Would you just listen for one minute?” she says. “I been married to him since I was sixteen. We got some rental property we own together. He’s a contractor. He didn’t leave me. I left him! You don’t understand.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I understand. I understand all of it. You’re wanting somebody to listen to all your problems and I ain’t no fucking head doctor. Just take me back to the club or let me out somewhere and I’ll catch a ride home. Hell, it’s Saturday night. I got to go back to work Monday. You know what I’m saying?” She fastens her bra back together and pulls her shirt down. By the time I get out the door to the running car, I’m surprised she hasn’t left me. The truck we saw earlier is gone, but she doesn’t mention it. I get in with her and sit close to the door all the way back. I look at her breasts. They are magnificent. I want to suggest another scenario, but I don’t.

I’m living with my mother again and Sunday is a chicken dinner, just the two of us. Mashed potatoes and English peas, gravy. I sleep late on Sunday, then go down to the road and pick up the papers, the Commercial Appeal from Memphis and the Clarion-Ledger from Jackson. The rest of my morning is taken up with reading these papers, especially the movie and book pages, and drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes until my mother comes in from church and calls me to dinner. I don’t have a car now; a lawyer has the money it brought, so now I read the pages with the car ads, too. I want to buy a new one, have been toying with the idea, and try to save my money for that.

Sunday afternoon, I’m asleep in the bed that held me as a child when the phone rings. I wake and turn and hear my mother moving toward me in the empty house, her feet and weight ponderous on the old boards, hesitant. She’s coming to see if I’m asleep and she probably hopes I am. She opens the door and sees me. She says there is some woman who wants to talk to me. I know somehow, freshly awake from dreams of erotica and hanging breasts, deliciously rested, ready for the last night of the weekend. I get up and go to the kitchen and shut the door. It’s her.

“Gary?” she says.

“Yeah.”

“It’s Connie.”

“Yeah. I know.” What does she want and why has she picked me? Why can’t she see that I’m bad for her? That I can’t take much more?

“Did I wake you up?”

“Yeah, matter of fact you did.”