“No, I don’t mind.”

“Here. Take this.” She was holding out a small aluminum packet between the first and second fingers of her right hand.

He took it and looked at it. The foil caught the bright morning sun and heliographed darts of light at his eyes. “What is it?”

“Product four synthetic mescaline. The heaviest, cleanest chemical ever made.” She hesitated. “Maybe you should just flush it down the john when you get home. It might fuck you up worse than you are. But it might help. I’ve heard of it.”

“Have you ever seen it?”

She smiled bitterly. “No.”

“Will you do something for me? If you can?”

“If I can.”

“Call me on Christmas day.”

“Why?”

“You’re like a book I haven’t finished. I want to know how a little more of it comes out. Make it a collect call. Here, I’ll write down the number.”

He was fumbling a pen out of his pocket when she said, “No.”

He looked at her, puzzled and hurt. “No?”

“I can get the number from directory assistance if I need it. But maybe it would be best not to.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I like you, but it’s like someone put a hurtin' on you. I can’t explain. It’s like you were going to do something really bonkers.”

“You think I’m a fruitcake,” he heard himself say. “Well, fuck you.”

She got out of the car stiffly. He leaned over. “Olivia-”

“Maybe that’s not my name.”

“Maybe it is. Please call.”

“Be careful with that stuff,” she said, pointing at the little aluminum packet. “You’re space walking, too.”

“Good-bye. Be careful.”

“Careful, what’s that?” The bitter smile again. “Good-bye, Mr. Dawes. Thanks. You’re good in bed, do you mind me saying that? You are. Good-bye.”

She slammed the door closed, crossed Route 7, and stood at the base of the turnpike entrance ramp. He watched her show a thumb to a couple of cars. Neither of them stopped. Then the road was clear and he U-turned, honking once. In the rearview mirror he saw a small facsimile of her wave.

Silly twit, he thought, stuffed full of every strange conceit in the world. Still, when he put his hand out to turn on the radio, the fingers trembled.

He drove back to the city, got on the turnpike, and drove two hundred miles at seventy. Once he almost threw the small aluminum packet out the window. Once he almost took the pill inside. At last he just put it in his coat pocket.

When he got home he felt washed out, empty of emotion. The 784 extension had progressed during the day; in a couple of weeks the laundry would be ready for the wrecking ball. They had already taken out the heavy equipment. Tom Granger had told him about that in an odd, stilted phone conversation three nights ago. When they leveled it he would spend the day watching. He would even pack a bag lunch.

There was a letter for Mary from her brother in Jacksonville. He didn’t know about the split, then. He put it aside absently with some other mail for Mary that he kept forgetting to forward.

He put a TV dinner in the oven and thought about making himself a drink. He decided not to. He wanted to think about his sexual encounter with the girl the night before, relish it, explore its nuances. A few drinks and it would take on the unnatural, fevered color of a bad sex movie-Restless Coeds, ID Required-and he didn’t want to think of her like that.

But it wouldn’t come, not the way he wanted it. He couldn’t remember the precise tight feel of her breasts or the secret taste of her nipples. He knew that the actual friction of intercourse had been more pleasurable with her than with Mary. Olivia had been a snugger fit, and once his penis had popped out of her vagina with an audible sound, like the pop of a champagne cork. But he couldn’t really say what the pleasure had been. Instead of being able to feel it, he wanted to masturbate. The desire disgusted him. Furthermore, his disgust disgusted him. She wasn’t holy, he assured himself as he sat down to eat his TV dinner. Just a tramp on the bum. To Las Vegas, yet. He found himself wishing that he could view the whole incident with Magliore’s jaundiced eye, and that disgusted him most of all.

Later that night he got drunk in spite of all his good intentions, and around ten o’clock the familiar maudlin urge to call Mary rose up in him. He masturbated instead, in front of the TV, and came to climax while an announcer was showing incontrovertibly that Anacin hit and held the highest pain-relief level of any brand.

He didn’t go riding Saturday. He wandered uselessly around the house, putting off the thing that had to be done. At last he called the home of his in-laws. Lester and Jean Galloway, Mary’s parents, were both nearing their seventies. On his previous calls, Jean (whom Charlie had always called “Mamma Jean") had answered the telephone, her voice freezing to ice chips when she realized who was on the line. To her, and to Lester also, undoubtedly, he was like some animal that had run amok and bitten her daughter. Now the animal kept calling up, obviously drunk, whining for their girl to come back so he could bite her again.

He heard Mary herself answer, “Hello?” with enough relief so he could talk normally.

“Me, Mary.”

“Oh, Bart. How are you?” Impossible to read her voice.

“Fair.”

“How are the Southern Comfort supplies holding out?”

“Mary, I’m not drinking.”

“Is that a victory?” She sounded cold, and he felt a touch of panic, mostly that his judgment had been impossibly bad. Could someone he had known so long and whom he thought he knew so well be slipping away so easily?

“I guess it is,” he said lamely.

“I understand the laundry had to close down,” she said.

“Probably just temporary.” He had the weird sensation that he was riding in an elevator, conversing uncomfortably with someone who regarded him as a bore.

“That isn’t what Tom Granger’s wife said.” There, accusation at last. Accusation was better than nothing.

“Tom won’t have any problem. The competition uptown has been after him for years. The Brite-Kleen people.”

He thought she sighed. “Why did you call, Bart?”

“I think we ought to get together,” he said carefully. “We have to talk this over, Mary.”

“Do you mean a divorce?” She said it calmly enough, but he thought it was her voice in which he sensed panic now.

“Do you want one?”

“I don’t know what I want.” Her calm fractured and she sounded angry and scared. “I thought everything was fine. I was happy and I thought you were. Now, all at once, that’s all changed.”

“You thought everything was fine,” he repeated. He was suddenly furious with her. “You must have been pretty stupid if you thought that. Did you think I kicked away my job for a practical joke, like a high school senior throwing a cherry bomb into a toilet?”

“Then what is it, Bart? What happened?”

His anger collapsed like a rotten yellow snowbank and he found that there were tears beneath. He fought them grimly, feeling betrayed. This wasn’t supposed to happen sober. When you were sober you should be able to keep fucking control of yourself. But here he was, wanting to spill out everything and sob on her lap like a kid with a busted skate and a skinned knee. But he couldn’t tell her what was wrong because he didn’t precisely know and crying without knowing was too much like it’s-time-for-the-loony-bin stuff.

“I don’t know,” he said finally.

“Charlie?”

Helplessly, he said: “If that was part of it, how could you be so blind to the rest of it?”

“I miss him too, Bart. Still. Every day.”

Resentment again. You’ve got a funny way of showing it, then.

“This is no good,” he said finally. Tears were trickling down his cheeks but he had kept them out of his voice. Gentlemen, I think we’ve got it licked, he thought, and almost cackled. “Not over the phone, I called to suggest lunch on Monday. Handy Andy’s.”