“That’s nice. Bob was that way with me and me with him. He was older but suave, and those goddamn gooks killed him. Killed him.” She began to cry and he moved to comfort her. “No matter now. In a way, when I fuck you I fuck Bob. Men are man. You get what I mean?”

“Not actually.” He felt flustered and dumb.

“Well, I happen to have a personal philosophy that’s not quite ready to reveal to the man on the street. To me, a lot of the dead aren’t really dead. They’re what I call the undead. Bob comes back to me in different ways. How do I know he’s not you? Can you prove you’re not Bob?”

“Nope. I guess I can’t.”

“Well, even your dicks are the same size though Bob had blue eyes. Yours is a little thicker. But I believe in the power of love and when we buried Bob over at his parents’ in Altoona I knew he wasn’t really gone. Once he even came to me in the form of a Negro. I can admit it to you because you’re artistic and won’t be criticizing.”

He hugged her, suffused with all the strange griefs of the world. She rose and plopped her trunk on the formica table, wagging her plump bottom at him.

“Let’s do it once more? Then you go. I got to get up for work in the morning.”

He felt that there was something extremely graceful about her, however sad, something oceanic, utterly lifelike. He stopped at Riker’s on Sheridan Square and had poached eggs and two cups of antisex. He vowed to do a portrait of her rubescence, lolling on black velvet. Walking down Grove Street to his humble quarters, his weenie chafed and twinged rawly against his trousers. He felt it was a hurt that stood for life itself.

Chapter 6

He emerged from the reverie facing the frozen squid in the sink. How is it possible to feel this stupid at forty-two? He didn’t know anything about squid except that they came from the ocean and it was unlikely that the squid would come back to life, under the stream of fresh Michigan water. One thawed enough on the corner for it to be detached. The small tentacles swung limply from the body. The dog stood eagerly beside him so he tickled the dog’s nose with the tentacles of the little creature.

“Lucky for you, Hudley, that this fucker isn’t twenty foot long.”

The dog gobbled, then choked and spit up. In the middle of the squid there was a plasticlike filament of some sort. The squid was beginning to seem less than the perfect buy.