I was sitting on the floor. It was cramped in there. I decided I might as well enjoy myself, so I looked through the keyhole while the girl undressed. My view was partially blocked by the couch, but I saw everything, as the girl moved around a little, placing her clothing piece by piece over on the dresser.

She was small, tan and big-breasted, with a simple, pretty face that had those same blue eyes as fat Wilma. She had shoulder-length dark brown hair and an equally dark brown pubic tangle that started as a trail at her navel and turned into a dense undergrowth soon after; it was a place you could get lost in for weeks. I hoped her overage boy friend wouldn’t be quite that long.

Turner took his clothes off, then. That I didn’t bother watching. I felt stupid, like a husband who didn’t have it right: the idiot didn’t realize it was the lover who hid in the closet, not the cuckold.

Then the bed was making noise and so were they. The radiator got its two cents in, too.

Me, I was slouched quietly down in the closet, back to the wall, gun in my lap.

Still waiting for Turner to come.

5

He and the girl stayed in the sack nearly two hours. I didn’t watch much of it, though the keyhole provided an unexpur- gated if small-screen view of the proceedings. Between rounds he would teach the girl things to do to him, and watching her crawl around on the bed and him doing them certainly beat watching reruns of “Celebrity Bowling.” But eventually, inevitably, he’d get on top of her and stay on top, which meant the view I had was largely of him, and I wasn’t particularly interested in looking up that asshole’s asshole.

So I sat there, patiently, my state of mind remarkably serene for a guy hiding in a closet, and why not. Turner was in a tighter box than I was, and I don’t mean that in the sense of a pun. He was in a very bad situation and didn’t know it, which was part of what made it so bad.