At the bowling alley parking lot he paused for a moment, then moved quickly inside like an assassin. He gave Patty a dark look and she followed him outside in her pleated skirt, bowling shoes, and a shirt that not oddly had PATTY emblazoned across the back. She jumped in the car beside him and they fell into each other’s arms.

“Let’s go to a motel.”

“I can’t. I got one more game. I can’t let the girls down.”

He started the car but she grabbed the keys and the car died with a grinding ignition squawk. She smelled of pee, talc, sweat and beer. She turned on the overhead light and stared at him down her pert, pointed snout, her head held high.

“Nobody pushes me, Johnny.”

He replied by pushing a paw up under her skirt and working two fingers in around her panties. She crooned and swiveled, burying the fingers to the hilt. He added a third as an afterthought. She leaned forward and delivered a not altogether pleasant French kiss. She backed away with misty eyes and flicked off the overhead light. “You smell like vegetable soup.”

“Vegetable-oxtail soup. My wife threw a bowl of it in my face.”

“Poor Johnny. I hope you kicked her in the cunt.” She deftly unzipped his fly, unleashing his limp noodle. “Let me give you a quick B.J. to get the pressure off. Then wait in the bar. I got that one more game and then we can go to a motel and go all the way.”

As she fell to, Warlock reflected on woman’s inhumanity to woman. He had never struck a woman and couldn’t imagine kicking the fair Diana in the cunt. In fact, he longed for her and tried to imagine that Patty’s furious mouth was Diana’s, but Patty was far more experienced, having perfected the rare technique of deep throat. Unfortunately there was a deep, glottal coughing sound to her technique and his imagination went far afield in order to come off: he was thirteen and at their summer cottage, the last time he played Indian doctor with the pretty thirteen year old a few cabins down. They were in a cave of logs, and on a bed of ferns with the sun dappling down through the poplar and oak. She was Marsh Hawk and he was Warlock. He drew down her shorts while she was anesthetized under secret herbs and he chewed at her sparse furze for the first time. Amazingly, she writhed around and he said you’re supposed to be out cold. She returned the favor and he permanently lost his soul to women with one long screech that shot through the forest, echoing in gulleys and across the lake like that of his namesake, the Warlock. When he opened his eyes to take her into his arms she was gone.