That was a bad period for me. For the month or so I’d been living in a rough patch of L.A., alternating between staying in bed feeling sorry for myself, watching daytime TV (game shows, not soaps), eating TV dinners, and venturing forth looking for women who were willing to fuck me for free, even if a certain venereal after-fee might get tacked on.

I was also drinking heavily, which is something I don’t normally do. In fact, I am more a soft drink kind of guy, though I do like wine, on special occasions, like New Year’s Eve or getting back from Vietnam.

And getting back from Vietnam is where I should start, really, to fill you in a little on how I became somebody who killed people for money. Or I should say somebody who killed people for good money, because in Nam I killed people for shit change, didn’t I? And the only person I ever killed for free was probably the only one that really counted, the only one that really mattered, and that I truly enjoyed doing.

Before I went over, I’d been stationed on the West Coast, and that’s where I met the California girl who became my bride. It was one of those whirlwind romances that are passionate and romantic and run to montages in the movies where the couples are hand in hand on the beach and in the park and share one ice cream cone with pop songs playing in the background. In our case it would have been something by the Association, “Cherish” maybe, though “No Fair At All” would have been more like it.

Because when I got home to our little bungalow in La Mirada, a day early, meaning to surprise my darling girl, I got surprised myself because she was in bed with a guy named Williams. I didn’t know his name was Williams at the time, but when I asked around the neighborhood later that day, I got filled in fast. He lived in La Mirada, too, just a couple blocks away, which is one reason why his car wasn’t in my sweetie’s driveway.