The dinner with Ed and Sheila was a decided flop. A day of overeating and work made him exhausted, and a few drinks added a certain gumshoe sense of the laconic to his attitude. The two couples had played bridge, dined, picnicked together, and Warlock had enjoyed them in a minimal fashion. The problem was that Ed and Sheila had just returned from a nine day est session in Chicago and their eyes, blazing with the newfound light, repelled him.

“I’m no longer going to try to dominate Ed in the sack,” Sheila had announced, sucking in a stray noodle. “You know I’d never blow him on a day he drank too much. Now we’re just balling, true and free.”

He noted the manner in which Ed had nodded smugly. The word “ball” always embarrassed Warlock, somehow connoting naked women fooling grotesquely with bowling balls, though not necessarily in a bowling alley.

“Werner showed me how my drinking was a cop-out on the real me inside.” Ed pronounced Werner as in Vernor’s ginger ale. He seemed to pig down the cheapish jug Burgundy like the old Ed.

Warlock mentioned that he had read in People that Werner’s name used to be Jack Rosenburg and that Jews should be proud of their race and not change their names. Look at Einstein, Oppenheimer and Linus Pauling.

“I don’t think Linus Pauling is Jewish,” Diana said.

“The exception proves the rule.” Warlock was bored and wanted to go to bed.

“You’re a naysayer, Johnny, that’s why you don’t have a job.”

“I have a job at triple what you make, fuckface. I think I’ll change my name to Woody Jesus. Woody Allen is funny and I was raised on Jesus.”

“You rubbed your boner against me two weeks ago,” Sheila challenged, to everyone’s amazement.

“I was thinking of Mrs. Carter,” Warlock replied.

PART II

There is an imagination below the earth that abounds in animal forms, that revels and makes music.

JAMES HILLMAN

The Dream and the Underworld

Chapter 22