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I’m going to hold my breath for sixty seconds and think of the Marlboro man and the Winston assholes and all the rest of them, and that’ll do it.’
    â€˜All right, I won’t till you do. But you won’t be able to stand Edith. I quit once for three days and Terry smelled like an ash tray.’
    â€˜Not all over. It was a good scene, though, in Boston. Hotel, took her to the airport in the morning, sad loving Bloody Marys. Then up in the air. Gone. Me watching the plane. Thinking of her looking down. Gone. Back to France. Maybe I’ll go see her someday.’
    â€˜You love her, huh?’
    â€˜I was fucking her, wasn’t I?’
    â€˜I guess it was tough breaking it off, her right down in Boston.’
    â€˜Jack.’ Grinning. ‘What made you think I broke it off? Why would I do a stupid thing like that?’
    â€˜Well, when the shit hit the fan Edith said you broke it off.’
    â€˜Course she said that. It’s what I told her.’
    â€˜Have a beer, you sly son of a bitch.’
    I held up two fingers to Betty and she slid off the stool.
    â€˜Wait,’ the fish man said. ‘I’ll get this one for the boys, and—lemmee see—’ he pulled out a pocket watch from his khakis, peered down in the red-lighted dark ‘—yeah, Betty, I’ll have one more, then I’ll be getting home and put my fish in the oven.’ Hank cocked his head and watched him. ‘Don’t get it started, the wife’ll come home and start looking around, wanting to know where’s the dinner.’
    â€˜I don’t blame her,’ Betty said.
    â€˜Oh sure. She works all day too, and I get home a little earlier, so I put the dinner on.’
    She gave us the beer and we raised our mugs to him and said thanks. He raised his, smiled, nodded, sipped. He picked up his fish, turning it in his hands, then lowered it to the bar.
    â€˜If I’m going to fry it I can start later, but when I’m baking like with this one, I need a little more time.’ He looked through the door at two men going into the dining room. ‘Someday I’m going to come in here and get me one of those fish platters. I’ll be about ready for one, one of these days.’
    Hank was watching him.
    â€˜Did you ever want to leave with her?’ I said.
    â€˜Why?’
    â€˜You said you loved her.’
    â€˜I still do. You’re nineteenth century, Jack.’
    â€˜That’s what you keep telling me.’
    â€˜It’s why you’ve been faithful so long. Your conscience is made for whores but you’re too good for that, so you end up worse: monogamous.’
    â€˜What’s this made for whores shit.’
    â€˜The way it used to be. Man had his wife and kids. That was one life. And he had his whore. He knew which was which, see; he didn’t get them confused. But now it’s not that way: a man has a wife and a girlfriend and they get blurred, you see, he doesn’t know where his emotional deposits are supposed to be. He’s in love, for Christ sake. It’s incongruous. He can’t live with it, it’s against everything he’s supposed to feel, so naturally he takes some sort of action to get himself back to where he believes he’s supposed to be. Devoted to one woman or some such shit. He does something stupid: either he breaks with the girl and tries to love only his wife, or he leaves the wife and marries the girl. If he does that, he’ll be in the same shit in a few years, so he’ll just have to keep marrying—’
    â€˜Or stay monogamous.’
    â€˜Aye. Both of which are utter bullshit.’
    â€˜And you think that’s me.’
    â€˜I think so. You’re a good enough man not to fuck without feeling love, but if you’re lucky enough for that to happen, then you feel confused and guilty because you think it means you don’t love Terry.’
    I looked him in the eyes and