“Well,” I say. I take a drink of my beer. Maybe she is telling the truth. Maybe they’ve had what she thought was a good marriage. It’s happened before. You can go along fine for years and it can fall apart in a second. You can do things to each other that can never be forgiven. One word can lead to another word. You can lose control and a whole lot more. They can make you pay for one second of anger. They can make you pay with your house, and your car, and your money and self-respect. She doesn’t have to tell me about marriage. I know already. Marriage is having to live with a woman. That’s what marriage is.

But I won’t have to see her after tonight. I won’t put up with any more shit from her. I don’t have to. I’m not married anymore. I won’t be again.

“How’s that sound?” she says.

“I guess it sounds all right,” I say.

“Listen, baby, I’m gonna make up for everything tonight. I mean, everything.”

“Well, okay,” I say. She’s convinced me. There’s only one thing. I don’t want her to pick me up here, at my mother’s. “Where do you live?”

“I can come get you,” she says.

“No. I’d rather you wouldn’t,” I say. “Listen. I’ve got a friend who’ll give me a ride out to your house. You staying in the house?”

“Hell yes,” she says. “I’m not gonna give it to my ex.”

“I’ll just get somebody to carry me out there, then. Where do you live?”

She tells me. I say I’ll be there by seven. I feel a lot better about everything when I hang up the phone.

“You sure this is it?” I say to my friend.

The boy I’m riding with looks at the mailbox.

“That’s the number. One hundred Willow Lane. Hell, Gary, there ain’t nothing but rich people live up in here.”

“Well damn,” I say. “This is the address she gave me.”

“Well, this is it then,” my friend says. “You want me to wait on you?”

“I don’t know. You might ought to.”

“We’ll just pull up in here and see if this is it.”

We drive up a blacktopped lane to a house designed like a Swiss chalet. I guess that it’s over four thousand square feet under this roof. It has big dormers and split shingles and massive columns of rough wood on the porch. There is a pool full of blue water in the backyard. The Lincoln I’ve been riding in and nuzzling her knockers in is parked in the drive.

“Hell. That’s her car,” I say. “I guess this is it.”

She comes to the kitchen window and pushes the curtains aside.