You know how the song goes:  “When you’re in love with a beautiful woman, it’s hard….”  That’s how I’ve always felt with Suzanne.  I try to hide it, but there are times when my insecurities emerge low in my viscera and refuse to go away.  We’ll be at a dinner party and I’ll glance across the table at her and catch her talking with another man.  She’ll be bright and animated and wholly engaged.  She’ll be that sparkling jewel I fell in love with, but she’ll be that sparkling jewel with everyone she meets.  When my insecurities are at their worst, I wonder to myself:  what if she meets another man who wants to hoard that jewel for himself as much as I do?  I tell myself that, as a matter of prudence, I should assume all men are as ill-intentioned as me.

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Mohammed had been sitting outside on a rock for about a thousand years when Youssef pushed his way from the tent to join his brother.  For nearly a hundred years, Mohammed had been waiting on the rock while Youssef deflowered virgin number seventy-two, taking her every-which-way his imagination would allow.  In the sand at his feet, Mohammed was using a stick to draw letters and figures, while he listened to the grunting and groaning, screaming and moaning, biting and panting.  Sometimes, while watching a passing caravan or grinning at the vulture who hunched and returned his grin, Mohammed would lean back and yell:  “Youssef!  Youssef!  Have you not had enough of her?”  In a way, he didn’t mind Youssef’s nonsense.  Without the sound of bombs detonating in the distance, or the burst of machine gun spray, the silence sometimes drove Mohammed to the brink of madness, so it was a relief to hear his brother’s noisy exertions.

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Norm and I had been on vacation when Ed across the road from us took his spell or whatever it was he took that ended up killing him and left poor Thelma all alone in that big old house of hers.  So, on account of us being in Wichita Falls at the time, Norm and I never had a chance to console Thelma or even bring her a casserole until three weeks after the fact.  We didn’t know a thing about it until after we got home.  Ray next door said there was quite a ruckus the night Ed died what with the sirens and flashing lights and police and ambulance people and even a big red fire truck parked a little down the road.  And there was poor Thelma in her housecoat wandering after the police, following them down the front walk and floating around like she was in a fog.
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If you’re gonna rat me out to my boss then you can just go fuck yourself. And besides … there’s no way on god’s green earth I’ll ever tell you what I’m doin’ home on a weekday watchin’ the Maury show. Oh ya, there’s Springer too. And I’m praisin’ the lord god almighty for inventin’ the remote so’s I can flip from one t’other. I’ve got this beauty of a flatscreen I’ve mounted on the wall in my den with a bar fridge in the corner and my favourite sofa plunked square in front of everything so’s I can just lie there and watch and when I get thirsty I can reach over to the fridge and pull me out a can of somethin’ cold. Today’s the perfect day for this – warm enough so’s you can leave the window open and even enjoy a cool one now and then, but not so warm as you’d work up a sweat. Don’t want my sweat to mess up my favourite sofa. Funny how’s you can get attached to somethin’ like a piece of furniture. There’s nothin’ fancy about the sofa; in fact, I bet you’d never find anythin’ like it at the Art Shoppe – though I’ll never be absolutely sure seein’ as I pulled it from the garbage two streets over. They could’ve bought it from the Art Shoppe and just decided to change their decoratin’ scheme. Doesn’t matter where it come from anyhows. It’s mine now.
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It was the best of busts; it was the worst of busts, the day I took down Tony Sarducci.

There was once a time when we had such hopes for the man. It was nearly ten years ago now that he made the announcement. “I’m goin’ clean,” he said. Even the papers picked it up. Front page news: “Sarducci runs a new game.” He gave us the feeling that anything was possible.
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