Jay Robert Durke was a big man, bearded of late, robust and a shade less than achieving complete failure when she'd met him. Generally, she thought of him as an overgrown child, awesomely equipped genitally, but God knows, heartbreakingly inadequate with all of his blessing. She'd actually met him in the office where she'd clerked and he'd been a once a month calling salesman. Her lover and future husband, who had been winding up his last year at law school, had done the sonofabitch thing… met and married another woman two weeks before!

She'd lived and breathed agony, probably two steps away from shoving her head into the gas oven of her apartment! Jay Durke, drunken lingerie traveler and an unknown week away from being fired, had been a desperately needed pillar to cling to. She had let him sleep with her the very first night and damned near laughed in his face in both mental and sensual chaos at his inexperienced love-making. Still, she'd had hopes, and he did mean security, so she had blindly married him that very week-end in Chicago and climbed aboard a 707 with everything she owned stored in the cargo below.

The dawning had come slowly. He'd found them a rundown apartment in San Arbella, and that's where they had stayed until he started making money and they'd moved to this rented luxury home across the street from the wealthy Stan Wilson. Though they had never completely run out of money, her meatloaf had begun to taste like salted glue before he'd made his connection with "Mr. Ace", proving that he could write, as he'd invariably insisted. From the beginning, after his continual bed fiascoes and the sickening realization that his offered security was little more than sand-castles he, himself, believed, Beth had sneaked off to bed at night when she could, while he worked into the wee hours.