By the end of the article tears begin to form at the thought that Diana might ever step out on him. To be sure, the lady was highly sexed, but he wasn’t a shirker when it came to satisfying her. Barring illness, he had never turned her down and she would vouch for this. The angle of tit for tat was bothersome, but Patty’s blowjob in the bowling alley parking lot couldn’t be held against him. It was obviously up in the air whether a blowjob constituted adultery in the first place, the Bible making no mention of the act. Rules had to be laid down in some form. The distant night in Corona, and the more recent three day session with Aurora up in Sault Ste. Marie, presented more severe difficulties to his waffling spirit. Diana in a weak moment had once said she could forgive him for a one night stand with a lady of the night if he were drunk. He tried mightily to remember being drunk throughout the three days with Aurora. All of those years of going to Sunday school at the Congregational Church bore down on him like a descending ceiling in a spy film. He was dangerously close to prayer but could only remember the words to “Now I lay me down to sleep,” and “Bless all the children throughout the world who are cold, sick or hungry.” Or all three. They kept changing the translation of the Lord’s Prayer and he anyway couldn’t remember the whole thing.

After an hour or so of this self-defeating nonsense his muscles finally tightened in arrogance in the bathroom. He failed to find a Valium in his kit but there was a big bomber with a ribbon tied around it, a joke gift from Diana. Hadn’t she understood the rigidity of airport security? May as well take a big draw on the sucker to aid the appetite. He put on a bathing suit just in case, then a Hawaiian shirt, and loose white linen trousers. Quite the sport. And a pale gray linen jacket.

“My, haven’t you gone tropic,” Mrs. Rabun said. Again, Warlock was the only customer in the gallery. Was there an edge of jest in her voice?

“I actually dreamt about the Hockney. I must have it.” He was stoned and giddy as a monkey.

“I’m not sure. I sell things so infrequently that I hate to let them go.”

“Oh, come now.” She looked somehow sedate and yummy at the same time. One mustn’t forget the needs of the mature woman, he thought, forgetting in a trice the recent horror of adultery.

“Okay. I mean I know I’m being captious. Would you like me to have it framed?”