grief-induced madness could have, in theory, brought on a lawsuit by the innocent husband, but the real villain of the piece was the Grim Reaper, and, so far as I know, no lawyer has ever figured out a way to have the last word in that conversation.

Longley’s face is mottled with rage.

“I’ll go to the prosecutor then and have the motherfacker put in jail.”

I sigh. The only thing that is entirely predictable in human history is that the messenger always gets it in the neck.

“Adultery,” I tell him as gently as possible, “isn’t a crime in Arkansas.”

Longley shoots up out of his chair and looms over me.

“What in the hell are you lawyers good for?”

I roll my chair back against the wall. Longley is too handsome to be a philosopher, but I have a weakness for purely rhetorical questions, myself.

“The jury’s still out on that one,” I concede.

His chin high, Longley marches righteously to my door sill but once there smartly executes an about face.

“Do you know what lawyers and sperm have in common?”

Actually, Julia, purporting to quote the wisdom of Rush Umbaugh, informed me yesterday, but feigned innocence may be the only way to get rid of Mr. Longley.

“No, what?” I ask.

Mr. Longley’s sickly expression convinces me that his wife made the right decision.

“Only about one in a million,” he shrieks, “ever grow to be a human being!”

Afraid to laugh for fear I may encourage him to launch into a morning’s worth of lawyer jokes, I stare reverently at his chin as if I were contemplating one of the great scientific discoveries of the century.

God only knows what he thinks is really going through my brain, but after a brief silence, he wheels again and is gone.