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dictionary. He doesn’t have a suit, he doesn’t have a passport. Karl Bennett doesn’t like looking up numbers in the phone book. He doesn’t like Ed Bradley’s pierced ear, women who wear a lot of makeup, or little boys with long hair.
    Once, after we staggered into a gas station after last call, Karl Bennett stumbled up to the counter with at least two dozen individually wrapped condoms. The lady at the register said, “You may be good, but you ain’t that good.”
     
     
     
     
     
    There have been several dogs in Karl’s life. There was a red heeler named Jingles. There was Butch, the Yorkie he had with Ex-Wife Number One, and Bandit, the beagle he had with Ex-Wife Number Two. Over the course of our marriage, Karl and I had two dogs: both red heelers, both named Jack. When Karl was twelve years old, he had a dog named Sandy, some mangy muttly thing that he loved a lot. The problem with Sandy, though, was that she had a taste for the neighbor’s chickens. After she’d killed one too many, Karl’s father told him a chicken-killing dog is only good dead, then handed over the .22. “You know what you need to do,” the old man said, and Karl did what the old man wanted: he took Sandy into the woods and shot her, but he had neither the heart nor the stomach to bury her. The next morning, Karl found Sandy alive, but barely, crawling out from under the porch to lick his hand. To this day, Karl Bennett believes that’s an example of love, pure and true.
    Out of all his sad stories—and Karl has quite a few—the story about Sandy is, for me, the saddest. I remember the first time I heard it, early on in our courtship: how Karl kept his head down, his hands fidgeting with something in his lap—a piece of twine, maybe, or a twig. His voice was soft, but flat, his brow furrowed. I felt so bad for him. Looking back, I don’t think Karl Bennett told that story to seduce me, though that was the effect it had.
     
     
     
     
     
    When I first met Karl Bennett, he and his red heeler, Jingles, lived on forty-three acres in western Pennsylvania, land he was just about to lose in the divorce settlement with Ex-Wife Number Two. His house was pretty much a shack, but with help from the Amish, he’d built a beautiful barn for his Appaloosas. Karl stretched a hose from the barn and through the window in the shack’s bathroom to fill the toilet with enough water to flush it. Squirrels nested in his attic. His refrigerator held beer, pepperoni, and jugs of milk in various stages of souring. He took his laundry to his mother. Karl drove a red pickup then, and Jingles rode shotgun, growling at everyone everywhere they went.
    Karl Bennett has a friendly smile. If you saw him standing in front of the freezer section at the grocery store contemplating ice cream or standing in line at the convenience store to pay for his gas and buy a scratch-off lottery ticket, you wouldn’t feel shy about saying hello. I’ve seen women give him sidelong glances; I’ve seen women bite down on their lips to redden them, fluff out their hair, and widen their eyes as they moved past him.
    “No one can say any of my wives were ugly women,” Karl says. “At least not when I married them.”
    Ex-Wives Number One and Number Two still live in western Pennsylvania, and as Karl tells it, they like to call each other up and swap stories about him. Neither of them has ever called me.
    Karl Bennett and I both live in western Colorado, where we moved in 1996, separated in 1997, tormented each other in 1998, and officially divorced in 1999. I live in Grand Junction, in a house on Main Street; I live with the son Karl and I share custody of; and the man the State of Colorado says is my common-law husband; and of course, Bobby, my dog.
    Karl lives just outside town in a shabby little duplex that doesn’t allow dogs. Once a month, when his child support check is due, Karl Bennett tells me he’s broke or something close to it. No woman in his life, no dog,