The future would be his own, goddammit! He had lost a precious year struggling with negativism, with self-criticism, just because there had been no place for him among the fungi of the Traverse City business community. He had been whirling like a self-righting sailboat in a bottomless ocean, never upright for more than a few moments. The vertiginous plunge from forty-five thousand a year as a foundation executive to the dole had nipped his life in the fatigued bud. The dream was a new start, a break in reality, glittering sunlight after a sodden, endless summer storm.

He opened a can of dog food with abandon, twisting the can opener with a new vigor. The dog approached with his accustomed low, guttural growl.

“Shut up Hudley you stupid motherfucker!” he yelled. The dog sat down, utterly startled. Warlock grabbed it, hoisting the dog’s ninety pounds to his shoulder level. “You fucking growl at me again and I’m pitching your dead ass in front of a truck. Get it? Get it?” He dropped the dog to the floor. Hudley nibbled at his food with a worried expression, stunned at this unexampled behavior and having no real notion what had caused it.

Warlock stepped out onto the back porch, breathing deeply to control the adrenaline rush. After a moment the dog scratched at the screen. On the porch Hudley leaned against his leg, wagging his tail. Fascism was evidently effective with dogs, he thought. He felt the clarity of having done something differently. Maybe the opportunity would arise again soon, he hoped. Meanwhile there was the problem of what to fix for dinner. On a whim he had bought five pounds of frozen squid for the amazingly low price of seventy-five cents a pound. But he had never eaten squid, let alone prepared it, and he wondered if this might provide a minimal adventure of sorts. His anger had offered up a sharp tinge of lust and he pondered the short-term effects of masturbation. It could be a disastrously energy-stealing act, making a good squid dinner unlikely. Once in New York a few years before, he had masturbated in his hotel after a bad landing at La Guardia and slept through an important meeting with the Ford Foundation. He had apologized, inventing a severe attack of colitis after a near plane crash as an excuse, but it had been nerve wracking to imagine that those imposing Ford Foundation executives might somehow know that he had been jerking off over Miss April, who had expressed interest in wind-surfing, gothic novels, and intellectual men.