“Don’t fuck with me, Charley. I’ve done my job. Do yours. I’d hate to see you back on a paper route. Get it?”

“I see. But you’ll eventually have to testify….”

“Great. I’ll wear a Donald Duck mask.” He hung up with a smash.

“You must be a big deal?” Aurora asked, her eyes still glazed by the trinket.

“Yes and no. No one really knows who I am.”

“Not even your wife?”

“My wife?”

“I went through your wallet.”

“She knows nothing. It’s a lonely, evil job. You play the hunches. Sometimes you live. Sometimes you die.”

“Oh my god, darling.”

“It’s okay. I haven’t died yet.”

The affair had ended on a bittersweet note. He had maintained the enigmatic charade on the phone with detectives, the lawyers, the prosecutor. They were all initially irritated, but then grew to enjoy the mystery of it. But Warlock was fatigued at answering the same or similar questions dozens of times. He and Aurora took a drive to a little lake in the forest where she and her school chums went to drink and smoke dope. Hudley had created the first cloud of the afternoon by jumping in the lake with a roar, and swimming out toward two fishermen in a canoe.

“What do we do?” they hollered from out in the lake.

“Hit him with your paddles.” They flailed at the dog until he turned around. He sat on the shore quietly, then, as if waiting for vengeance.

“Why don’t you ever see Armenia on a map?” he had asked innocently.

“Greece and Turkey gobbled up the country of my fathers.”

“Hungary fried Turkey in Greece. Remember that one?”

“It’s not funny, Johnny.”

“I didn’t present it as a world class joke.”

“What do you know of our tragedy, you bastard?”

“I didn’t wipe out your fucking country. Ease up.”

Later, at dinner at a place called the Antlers, things got even rougher. His fork and knife had been poised over a massive porterhouse as she picked at a salad and radishes.

“How can you put that in your mouth? Yuk.”

“I cut it in inch squares with knife and fork. Watch.” Pretty good, but Dad is right. They just don’t hang meat long enough anymore.

“Watching you makes me want to puke.”

“Keep it up and you’re going to be eating some of it.” He tamped a driblet of blood off his lip with his napkin. One of his least favorite things was negativism during his dinner.

“You wouldn’t dare,” she hissed, her anger no doubt fed by bad diet. He could almost feel the grating of those endless bags of corn chips she ate in bed.