Now working over the leftovers, he reflected on how as an emergency and cardiac nurse Diana was certainly out there on the firing line. Still charged with his partly waking dream he wondered how much of his new life he could share with her. Diana tended toward the acerbic, the caustic, and it might make sense to keep this new baptism secret until it panned out. He lowered the food to the dog, Hudley, a rather massive Airedale. The dog, after one tentative lap, rejected the hasenpfeffer. Hudley had never refused food before, not even an experimental leaf of lettuce, or a cracker with Tabasco for punishment. He pretended that the cracker wasn’t hot. Lundgren-Warlock had bought the dog as a pup after reading a dog article that described Le feu d’Airedaile—the Airedale fire. Now the best that could be said was that the dog was an individual. Early in his puberty Hudley had developed an affection for garbage cans as sexual objects. The dog would push a can over and hump it in a hypnotic frenzy. Diana would say, quite the dog you bought, buster. She was a farm girl and didn’t believe in house dogs. She punished Hudley, justly and unmercifully, while Warlock heaped love on the dog as some sort of obtuse soul mate. Quite naturally the dog adored Diana and only tolerated Warlock, unless he was being fed or taken for a ride. For better and usually worse, Hudley was his Rozinante, though without saddle and snaffle. On a whim he went to the refrigerator and put a handful of grated cheese on the leftovers. Hudley loved cheese. No dice. The dog growled, then abruptly went to sleep in a pool of sun coming through the window.

So much for cuisine, back to the future, he thought. Plans. Take a shower. Examine moments and how they might be radicalized. A mere fruit fly alters the taste of a glass of wine. Specific plans. I have the unemployment office. What’s for dinner? Something subtle in lieu of the rabbit vinaigrette. The Indians and their power food. Hop to the shower like a great big bunny.

In truth Lundgren-Warlock owned a few loose ends, ends that would come clear to an apt reader of resumés. Resumés tell the real story, assuming you are an engine, a boat, a building. Two marriages of seven years apiece: the first a cauldron of grief and pleasure that ended when at thirty-two he had proposed to Diana at a county fair. The pursuit was successful, though later when he played her Bob Dylan’s mournful song about a girl at a north country fair she heehawed, being without sentiment over the lyrics of popular music. Only a few nights before as he scanned the new Playboy for good articles and beaver shots at the kitchen table, he could hear her singing along with Handel’s Messiah.