Tucker fell back with an exasperated sigh. He didn’t understand religion. It was like heroin or golf: He knew a lot of people did it, but he didn’t un-derstand why. His father watched sports every Sunday, and his mother had worked in real estate. He grew up thinking that church was something that simply interfered with games and weekend open houses. His first ex-posure to religion, other than the skin mag layouts of the women who had brought down television evangelists, had been his job with Mary Jean. For her it just seemed like good business. Sometimes he would stand in the back of the auditorium and listen to her talk to a thousand women about having God on their sales team, and they would cheer and “Hallelujah!” and he would feel as if he’d been left out of something—something beyond the apparent goofiness of it all. Maybe Dusty had something on him besides a hundred pounds.

“Dusty, why don’t you go out tonight? You haven’t been out in two weeks. I have to be here, but you—you must have a whole line of babes crying to get you back, huh? Big football player like you, huh?”

Dusty blushed again, going deep red from the collar of his practice jersey to the top of his head. He folded his hands and looked at them in his lap. “Well, I’m sorta waitin’ for the right girl to come along. A lot of the girls that go after us football players, you know, they’re kinda loose.”

Tuck raised an eyebrow. “And?”

Dusty squirmed, his chair creaked under the strain. “Well, you know, it’s kinda…”

And suddenly, amid the stammering, Tucker got it. The kid was a virgin. He raised his hand to quiet the boy. “Never mind, Dusty.” The big tackle slumped in his chair, exhausted and embarrassed.

Tuck considered it. He, who understood so much the importance of a healthy sex life, who knew what women needed and how to give it to them, might never be able to do it again, and Dusty Lemon, who probably could produce a woody that women could chin themselves on, wasn’t using it at all. He pondered it. He worked it over