About forty-five, he looks like the former pitcher Jim Palmer, though the only image I can now summon of that Baltimore great is the man in his underwear. What people won’t do for money!

The way things are going on TV, pretty soon we’ll see Palmer slipping his briefs down to his knees and demonstrating how to put on a rubber.

“You got that Razorback football player off,” he informs me.

“That’s how I got your name.”

“The jury acquitted him,” I say, politely.

In my office Longley gets right to the point.

Neatly dressed in a suit patterned in slate and black mini-tooth that looks one hundred percent wool, he perches on the edge of the chair across from my desk and says, “My wife ran off with another man, and I want to sue the bastard.”

I wince, explaining, “The Arkansas legislature abolished the suit of alienation of affection a few years ago. There’s no cause of action in this state any longer.”

Longley almost bounces out of his chair.

“You mean a man can steal my wife,” he thunders, “and I can’t even get a dime?”

“I’m afraid not.” Woman as property-obviously a concept still alive in our hearts if no longer on the books. Damn. On the witness stand, as good as Longley looks, this guy would have gotten some female juices flowing in the jury box. Still, I wonder what he did to run his wife off. In this day and age, women aren’t exactly tied to a slake in the bedroom to await their husband’s return. The longer I think about it, the more obnoxious the notion of a suit for alienation of affection becomes. The law, in its infinite wisdom, turned what should have been a consensual relationship between two people into a legal monopoly.

Good for the legislature. It gets blamed for everything bad that happens in the state, but rarely gets credit for anything positive. But probably there was more to it than a mild outbreak of feminism. It’s not unlikely that some of the members were afflicted by a “there but for the grace of God go I” mentality. I know the feeling. Less than a month after Rosa died I found myself being consoled in a motel by her best friend. This