Warlock turned as Diana yawned and stretched. He had missed Ed Bradley and was pissed. Sunday night TV was a wasteland of evangelism in Northern Michigan—Jim Bakker’s PTL club on one station and Jack Van lmpe with his wife Rexella on the other station. And the country music station signed off at eleven P.M. Lately he had begun to listen to this mordant, somber music for the first time since he had been stationed in El Paso. It seemed to focus on some of his problems, singing as it often did of the camaraderie of outcasts, drinkers, adulterers, the unemployed, the peripheral whites far from the centers of wealth and power, much less solvency. There was a horrifying song by Merle Haggard about some young fool turning twenty-one in prison and doing life without parole. He could not imagine a worse fate, knowing through his father how men behaved in prisons. Diana had thought his TV crush on Dolly Parton to be laughable. Clete loved her, too, referring to her as Miss Dolly, as they listened to albums of her crystal Appalachian voice, singing of woes more real than their own. Now that he had a job perhaps he should stop listening to such music? Bad luck is self-fulfilling prophecy, his mother always said. He felt Diana’s breath on his ear and he slumped over to protect the papers from her sight.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Must be important. You missed the news. I’m going to bed.”

“Good night, darling.”

“How can you kiss me when you’re flopped over the table?” she teased.

“Just step back seven paces and I’ll tuck you in.”

She counted off the steps drowsily while he shuffled the papers into a pile. He embraced her and directed her toward the bedroom, but she slid a hand in his robe and massaged his weenie.

“Just one little secret?”

“Not even for the dread Swedish ice-cube trick.”

She crawled in bed and wagged her hinder at him and Warlock thought of slipping her a phony secret in return for something odd, but a shadow crossed over her fair brow.

“Johnny, don’t take the job unless you really want it. We’re living fine on what I make.”

“Don’t be silly. I want the job. It’s suited to my talent. I want it badly and I don’t even know what I’m going to get paid.”

“I worry about you. You drink so much more than you used to. You watch TV until it drives me nuts. We used to read together.”

“I know it. But I feel I’m getting it together now.” He sat on the bed beside her and caressed her neck.