The door slammed, echoing down the long hall. Bluish gray light pushed through the thin white curtains, as the woman left Jonah's place much faster than she had entered an hour earlier.

She wasn't angry or out of sorts--she simply was exhausted and in a hurry. In her early forties, she looked ten years younger. She had the kind of patrician face that you see around the Hamptons or Beverly Hills, and sandy hair cut short. She wore a cropped black leather jacket over a pencil skirt, black hose, and black boots with two-and-a-half inch heels.

Her husband would be home within the hour.

"Unfuckingbelievable," Jonah muttered to himself; the sex had been great. But, what she had done to him, pleasurable as it might have been, was a breach of natural law, like a butterfly humping a cockroach.

Jonah was a slob. A tall, fleshy man with a hound-dog face, wrinkled like yesterday's tan shirt. He didn't deserve Marion, she was too high classed. He knew that, but his bulk and personal hygeine didn't seem to matter to her. He made her happy in the sack, and that's all that counted wasn't it?

His double-wide smelled like Dinty-Moore beef stew, coffee, sweat, and the vagrant vegetable odor of marijuana. Jonah eyed the leftover carry-out food on the kitchen counter. Packing his face with curly fries, he was feeling increasingly upbeat. His fleshy cheeks glistened with French fry grease, and poppy seeds speckled his stained teeth.

Finishing his drink, he rattled the ice, took a last sip and laughed thunderously. He stuck a cigar in the middle of his chubby smile and slipped out the back door of his place, stood in the dark, and lit the cigar.

If you listened hard enough at night, you could hear a background crackling, as if the leaves of the trees were talking to each other. Too bad he had to live in such a shitty neighborhood. That would change though when Marion got divorced from that silly bastard she was with. He had the bucks and Marion would soon have all of it. She had been promising to file for so long now though . . .

His neighborhood was a disorganized suburb of antique mobile homes. Mobile, yes, but it was apparent they had not moved in decades. The trailers were packed tightly together like rows of dominoes. The short, narrow driveways seemed inches apart and were filled with old pickups and rusted lawn furniture. The streets were crowded with parked cars, junk cars and abandoned cars. Motorcycles and bicycles leaned on the trailer hitches and lawn-mower handles protruded from beneath each home. A sign called the place a retirement village---. It was more like a slum on wheels, or a project with a trailer hitch.

The phone thrummed in Jonah's pocket. His brain usually worked but in slow motion. It was Marion.

"Jonah!"

"Yeah."

"Listen, you'd better be on your guard." She was bawling and her shrieks sounded like a sack full of starving kittens. "Joe knows. He knows about us. He was here when I got home. One thing led to another and I told him I'm getting a divorce. Jonah, are you there?"

"Yeah! Yeah! I'm here. Calm down, for Christ's sake."

"How can I be calm? He went ballistic. He ran out the door all pissed off."

"Honey, don't worry, he doesn't know where to find . . ."

Jonah staggered as a heavy fist clobbered the side of his head. Marion's husband came at him in a fighter's stance.

He had a pipe-stem neck, a wide slice of a mouth, and gleaming, bugged-out eyeballs. He looked like an anorexic bullfrog, but he was obviously strong.

Throwing a left hook to start, he dropped his hands when he punched. Jonah blocked his hook with his right and put a hard jab onto his nose. It didn't faze the guy. He kept coming. He faked a left and tried an overhand right. Jonah took it on his forearm and nailed him with a right cross, and he went down. He got right back up, but his eyes were a little unfocused, and his hands were at his waist. Jonah hit him with his right forearm and then torqued back and hit him with the side of his right fist. He went down again. He tried to get up and made it to his knees, and wobbled there on all fours. Falling back on his haunches, he stared up at Jonah.

"So you're her new screw, eh?"

"I wouldn't say that," said Jonah.

"I just did." He struggled to his feet and swiped the blood off his nose. He laughed. "You can have her. I'm tired of it. You think you're the first one she's laid behind my back? Hell, Marion's been poked more times than a porcupine has quills."

"I don't really care, to tell you the truth," said Jonah. "I'm not looking to fall in love."

"Well, she thinks she's leaving me, but she's got that bass ackwards, my friend. I'm the one who's quitting. I should have a long time ago but I convinced myself that I still cared."

"Why did you come to whip my ass then?"

"I don't know--it just tore me up when she came home bragging about getting a divorce and all. I needed to take it out on somebody, I guess."

Jonah reached out to shake the man's hand. "Sorry it didn't work for you."

"No, I'm sorry for you my friend. Marion talks a lot. Lies a bunch, too. She should have told you she tested positive for AIDS two years ago. Like I said, I stood by her long enough . . . It's time for a change . . . all the way around, the way I see it. Good Luck."

Jonah felt something uncoil in his brain.