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not for the same reasons,” she suggested wryly.
    Jack Liffey smiled as they came up onto the wide bungalow porch. He thought of some of the things Marlena did in bed that he liked a lot and was perfectly happy their reasons differed. Beyond that, there were a lot of real problems they hadn’t worked out yet.
    “Would you wait out here for a minute, hon?”
    “You two gonna fight?”
    “I hope not.”
    He found her in the kitchen, fussing over a big pot of something as she peered under the lid. She had actually lost about fifteen pounds recently, just for him, she said, and she looked a lot better for it. Another fifteen would have got her back to the regular dress sizes.
    “Hi, Mar. I’m home.”
    “Jackie, you didn’ call.”
    “I said I’d probably be late.”
    She nuzzled and clung to him when he kissed and he could sense her sniffing him for foreign perfumes. Then she took his hands and smelled at them too, one after another. Finally she wormed a hand down into his pants and grasped his penis and manipulated it in a way she had. She claimed to be able to tell if it had been used. There had been a little jealousy before he moved in, but the pathological aspects had developed after.
    “Feels okay,” she said. “You know what I want to do with Big Jackie later?”
    “I can think of a number of things,” he said. “Maeve’s right outside,” he added quickly.
    She gave a last squeeze. “You be thinking of one you want special for Big Jackie. I got some ideas for Brown Betty, too.” Her little dog leapt between them and got his own ideas and started vibrating on Jack Liffey’s foot. “I’m steaming some tamales. You hungry?”
    “Sure, thanks. Love it.” He used his other foot to shoo the dog gently away and it yipped in complaint. “Hello, there, Fidel. Are we happy, tonight?”
    “He loves Maeve bein’ here.”
    “It’s mutual, I’m sure.” Just about every evening, he had the same thought at least once—how easily the chihuahua would fit into the microwave. He could see the door closing and the light coming on, the turntable starting up as the tiny brown eyes got much bigger and the mouth opened soundlessly. His own dog, a big incorrigible half coyote, was confined out in the back yard. Loco would have eaten Fidel for a canapé.
    “So how were The Young and the Clueless today?”
    “ Restless ,” she said in a huff. Normally he was careful not to joke with her like that—she tended to react to his irony as if he were speaking a secret language in order to make fun of her—but Maeve’s appearance had led him to relax a little too much.
    “Sorry. Of course.” Marlena had had a hard life, she had a real core of human decency to her, and sometimes he felt such tenderness for her that he got woozy with it. Other days his own temper would snap out uncontrollably at something untutored she said that he felt reflected back on him somehow. It didn’t make him like himself much, and he hoped time would sort it out.
    “Baker, the tall lady with the sports car that owns the gift shop, and her old boyfriend, the intern, are getting back together,” she explained, as if they were all real people who lived right down the road and came to Sunday barbecues.
    “Great.”
    The front door creaked and the dog yipped and tore out of the kitchen toward Maeve. Jack Liffey looked forward to going out and giving Loco a big hug later.
    “Stop that!” he heard Maeve say sharply, and he pictured the little dog humping away on one of her fuzzy brown shoes.
    A Santa Ana was blowing, scouring the sky with hot dust and filling the dry night air with anxiety. Billy Gudger saw a couple of tall palms lean west and then lurch even farther in a gust. His old VW ran better in damp air, but it never got much of a chance for that. A family from somewhere in the Midwest scurried away from Disneyland toward one of the cheap motels, the father in a flapping sport coat bent forward in the lead with the others towing