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cup.
    “Thirty more after he turns it over.”
    She kept watching the young man. He was walking up and down the sidewalk. He carried something that was alive in a tow sack.
    “I don’t think it’s even out there anymore,” Helen said. “And what’s that he’s got in that sack?”
    “I saw it this morning, walking around. It’s probably hiding. I don’t know what he’s got in the sack.”
    “How do you know he can catch it?”
    “He said he could. He seems like a nice young man.”
    Helen stepped to the dining room table and removed a chair that she placed by the window. She sat in it and looked out for a bit. He sipped his coffee. He knew that three months was a long time to go without for somebody who liked it as much as she did. He guessed she was tired of trying. But so was he. Whenever he looked at it now, the head of it seemed to be turning purple. Was it dead, had part of him died? Sometimes it felt cold, rubbery. Like there wasn’t any blood circulating through it. Like your arm when you sleep on it at night sometimes.
    “I feel sorry for that boy out in the cold,” she said.
    “He’s getting paid for it.”
    “I wish I knew what he had in that sack.”
    “I guess we’ll find out,” Arthur said. He stood close to Helen and eased his hand onto her shoulder. She reached over her drinking arm and patted his hand just for a second, and then Arthur took his hand away. He knew how wet she could become. She was evidently coated on the inside with the slickest and most lubricious oil imaginable. He figured she still harbored vast reserves of it, deep, hidden within her body like a petroleum deposit buried beneath a mountain. He hoped nobody at the Peabody was drilling for it.
    The young man stopped in the yard and set the sack down. The sack moved and jerked about. Arthur didn’t know if he liked the look of that. He’d thought maybe he would have something on a long pole with a snare or a loop on the end of it, but it was plain now that he hadn’t come equipped with anything like that.
    “What’s he got in there?” Helen said. “A monkey?”
    “Beats me. He didn’t say what he was going to use. He just told me he could catch it.”
    “What’s his name?”
    “I don’t know. I didn’t ask him.”
    “Well, for heaven’s sake.”
    “What?”
    “You hired somebody and you don’t even know what his name is? Where did you find him?”
    “Over at the pet shop at the Mall of Memphis. You know, Studebaker’s?”
    “God.” She sipped her drink. “That’s such a stupid name for a pet shop.”
    “Well…I guess if that’s your name…”
    “What were you doing at the pet shop?”
    “I was looking for a tranquilizer gun for the kitten. You know, one that shoots darts? You know, like those you see on TV? You’ve seen them, like the ones they use over in Africa and places? I saw them shoot one into an elephant that was running amuck one time. Well, actually they shot five or six into it. They had to keep reloading their gun. I think they were using extra-large darts. I didn’t figure I’d need any that big.”
    Helen looked out the window again, frowning. She seemed pretty disgusted with him.
    “I can’t imagine what you could have been thinking,” she said, and flounced the edge of her dress over her pretty knees as she sometimes did when she got agitated with him. Out in the yard, the young man took a long look around, then pulled a leash out of his pocket and opened the mouth of the sack. What started coming out was a scarred old pit bull, brindle colored, tiger striped, nub eared, a runt.
    “Oh shit!” Helen said, and lurched up, sloshing some of her drink on the carpet. Out in the yard, the young man had snapped the leash onto the pit bull’s collar and was kneeling and petting him. Arthur could see the wide tongue of the dog licking his hand. The dog moved with difficulty, as if his legs were bad. The young man stood up and led him forward and the old dog limped along beside