VII

I finger the rim of her asshole, and am horribly embarrassed. “All systems go,” she howls, and makes a whooping sound. “Ready for liftoff, Houston,” she says, pronouncing Houston, Howston. Oh, it’s the worst. She is face down with her hips in the air. “Green light means go,” she says, “to the moon.” My body shakes with desire. Light jazz pollutes the air. “Money makes the queen go soft,” she says, and I don’t know what she means. “I don’t want your money,” I say, “not anymore,” but at this point she has taken herself, and doesn’t listen.

XI

I move the figurines across my desk. At first it’s a parade. Then it’s a battle. Then I’m tired of my figurines. “I want my whiskey,” I say. “Give me my whiskey.” She lies underneath the bed sheets cradling the bottle. The sheets are thin enough that I can see the bottle’s whiskey-brown glow.
“Sex first, then whiskey,” she says. Furious, I throw my figurines across the room, accidentally hitting the cat right in its little butt.

XVI

“Eventually, Ohio,” he says, “down the road.” And he means literally down the road since he’s a professional driver and thinks that way. But he’s not driving now.
“Do you intend to drive?” I have to ask him, as per legal stipulations.
“No,” he says, “as I’ve legally declared my opposition to driving throughout the union, and I intend to remain consistent in that.” I pretend to write something on my clipboard. His face blanches. “What are you writing?” he asks.
“Oh, nothing,” I say, which is true, though my inflection indicates the very opposite.
“Tell me what you’ve written,” he says, “please.”
“I’m legally disallowed from divulging what I’ve written,” I say, which is partly true. He rocks forward in his chair and slowly lowers spittle from his mouth. He tries to suck it back up, but it’s too late—spit splatters the tiling.

XXV

“Margaret,” I say, looking into the mirror, shirt off, holding my big fat belly, “you love this.” I slap my belly. “Don’t you?” I grip it with two hands and give it a shake. “You fucking love it, Margaret,” I say, my voice rising. I turn the bathroom light off, then on, really fast, to produce a strobe affect. “Oh yeah,” I say, “Come on now.” I do a little dance, still flipping the light. She’d love this dance—Margaret would—if only she was still with us.

XXIX

“The truth is I’m completely incapable, I’m overrun with doubts, even here, even now. Look, okay, in actuality I am capable, and we’re all going to be fine, but I’m like anyone else. No, I’m worse than everyone else, far worse. Maybe I don’t mean that. I mean, I do—and I don’t. How do I know what you’re like, your truest selves? I think that’s part of the problem. I have constant access to my truest self. It’s 24-hour self-analysis, a brutally honest examination of who I really am as a person, what I actually stand for, and I don’t mean simply in terms of what I believe in. No, I mean in how I act. Belief comes out in what you do. Somebody once said the truest measure of a man is how he spends his free time. And there’s something to that—do you know how I justified my first affair? By being damn sure my wife didn’t find out, that’s how. If she never found out, then it never happened, is how I thought of it. It’s still how I think of it, actually. I mean, that is some fucking crazy logic. Even crazier that I STILL BELIEVE IT. Even now, even saying what I’m saying to you people right now. Okay? I’m trying to be honest. I’m wondering if you care. I’m wondering right now if this might be too much honesty. I suspect it is, but what the hell. We’re stuck here for a minute and I need to clear my goddamn head out. It just gets so stuffed, and twisted, and tangled, and where does it end? Where? Oh, I know where, I mean, we all do, we all know where it ends up, but only in the abstract. You know even when we buried mom, watching the casket go down, oh it hit me a little bit then—hang on—what’s that?
“Okay, people, we’ve just been given the green light. The time is 2:34. The flight’s about 4 hours. You know where it’s going. Sit tight.”