It sort of crumpled me. We were in her convertible, and once it was fun to just throw them straight up while we were going down the road. The wind, or I guess just running out from under them was fun. It was a game. Now it didn’t seem to matter. I think we both had the creep of something bad coming up on us. She could have beat the shit out of me, I could have beat the shit out of her. It’s no way to live. You don’t want to go to sleep nervous, fearing the butcher knife, the revolver, the garrote.

“Just go in and get some beer,” she said. “We got to talk.”

Then she started crying. She wasn’t pretty when she was crying. Her whole face turned red and wrinkled up. I knew it was me. It’s always me.

“You’re just so damn great, ain’t you?” she said. “Don’t even want nobody overt the house, cept a bunch of old drunks and freaks and whores.”

My friends. Poets, artists, actors, English professors out at Ole Miss. She called them drunks and freaks. Slapper. Slap shit out of her.

“Just go on git the damn beer,” she said. “I got something to tell you.”

It’s awful to find pussy so good that treats you so bad. It’s like you’ve got to pay for it being good. But you’ve got to be either a man or a pussy. You can’t just lay around and pine. I thought at that point that maybe I’d gotten out of that particular car for the last time.

I went on in. I was even starting to feel better. If she left, I could go home, open all the doors, crank up the stereo, get free. I could start sleeping in the daytime and writing at night again, nonstop if I wanted to, for eight or ten hours. I could have a party without somebody sullen in one corner. Everything would be different and the same again.

Well, hell, I wasn’t perfect though, was I? I’d probably been a shitass a few times. Who’s not? Even your best friend will turn asshole on you from time to time. He’s only human.

I knew somebody else would come along. I just didn’t know how long it would be. So I did a little quick rationalizing inside the store.

Whatever I was going back outside to wasn’t going to be good. She was bracing herself up to be nasty to me, I could see that. And there wasn’t any need in a bit of it. I could do without all the nastiness. I could take an amicable breakup. All I had to do was hang around inside the store for a while, and she’d probably get tired of waiting for me, and run off and leave me. So I went back toward the rear. The old bag was watching me. She probably thought I was a criminal. All I was doing was sitting back there gnawing my fingernails. But it was no good. I couldn’t stand to know she was out there waiting on me.