“You’ll never know when it’s coming….” He interrupted himself to stare at the ceiling in convulsed horror. She looked up in alarm, with her mouth popping open, as mouths always do. She got an especially bloody square from near the bone.

“You motherfucker,” she screamed spitting the meat nearly the length of a good broad-jump. She ran toward the restroom sobbing.

Warlock noted that their little scene was a show stopper. It had been prime time Friday evening in the best restaurant in town and all the eaters in the house, some swiveling uncomfortably from their booths, were staring at him. He took a largish bit of meat, wondering if a vindication was in order. He spoke firmly and loudly as he chewed.

“I guess I owe you all an apology. You’re paying good hard-earned dollars for an evening out on the town, and what you’ve been through, candidly, is a mud bath. That was my little sister, more precious to me than life itself. Don’t take her curse seriously. It’s idiomatic of course. I never had a thought about Mom who died when we were kids. Anyway, to make a long story short, I drove five hundred miles from Akron, Ohio, today because Sis is a college student with a drug problem. I’m a doctor and it’s my professional opinion that she will need years of hospitalization….” The manager approached, nervously testing the air for the right move. “So I’m very sorry. As a gesture of apology I want to buy the drink of your choice for everyone in the house.” The manager led the applause. Warlock felt sweat trickling down his chest. Several people came over to shake his hand, including an older couple who assured him that their prayers would follow. A waitress whispered shyly that Aurora was out in the car waiting for him. He dropped two more of his dwindling supply of C-notes on the table, shook hands with the manager and left.

It was perhaps a coincidence that she extracted the price of a gram of coke before she would forgive him. He waited in the Subaru outside a student bar while she made the purchase, petting the somber Hudley who was still thinking of the fishermen with paddles. What if they got busted? What would the police do with his not exactly beloved dog?

Back in the room she went through the ritual of chopping the drug into little white lines. He had witnessed this nonsense before, though he had never partaken of the drug. Warlock’s friend, Garth, the avant-garde artist, merely poured it in a spoon and snorted away.

“How can you put that up your nose? It makes me puke.”