Despite himself, Dobler was still seeing Tara. Their relationship was approaching critical mass at approximately the same time Reagan took a slug below the armpit and just two days later was on television, waving triumphantly from a window in Bethesda hospital.
Dobler watched the images from bed and punched up the volume with the remote. There were cheers, squeals, and several dull-witted blasts from air horns. Reagan wore a pure white terry bathrobe and looked tanned and invincible.
Dobler yawned. "Lucky old Borax boy."
Tara was floating face down in the waterbed, long red hair spilled over her ear.
The producers lowered the feed on the crowd, and Cronkite spoke in solemn rhythm.
—And now the doctors say the President is doing well, and for this we all are thankful.
"Well dum-de-dum-de-dum for them."
"Quiet," moaned Tara. "My head hurts."
The night before, they had launched into a third bottle of wine before fucking on his apartment balcony. A glass of red had tipped and fell to the concrete. They were soon lit by a flashlight, its beam emanating from a security guard standing in the flower beds below. All they could see was a large crewcut head and some silver-framed glasses.
"Suggest you take that inside," Crewcut had told them.
"What a Nazi," Dobler muttered, not sure if he had been heard or not.
He was late for work, but didn't care. He might quit work. So what? he thought. Hell, it was just a gig selling Chevrolets, a failed dealership that hires anyone. He was miserable working with those uneducated roosters. What was he doing there anyway? Why wasn't he teaching, and why was he stuck with a woman he had nothing in common save a ferocious sexual appetite?
—and doctors claim such robustness in a man his age—
"They make him sound like a goddamn divinity," Dobler said.
Tara peeped from under a pillow, her blue eyes half-closed, her eyelids a violet tint, more sunset than sunrise. "Is he better?"
"Cronkite's bouncy iambs indicate yes."
"His what?"
Dobler gave her a sour look.
"I'm glad he's better," Tara said.
"I guess he should ask himself if he's better off this year than last."
"Quit it. He's a decent man."
"He's the reason there are rent-a-cops in our courtyards."
Tara looked at the TV with concern, then shook her head.
"Funny boy. It can't be time to get up, is it?"
-and the First Lady is now appearing beside the President-
Tara made a move to get up, and Dobler watched her intently. Out of the sheet came quite a leg. All the way from the suntan arc at the hip to a thin strap of rawhide around her ankle. He moved toward her.
"No, it's not time to get up yet."
"No. I'm sore."
Dobler put on his raggedy madras robe and went into the living room. He snatched the cover off the parakeet cage, and thumped the bottom of the cage with his thumb. The bird flapped nowhere in a swirl of feathers and seed husks.
"Don't scare it," Tara called from the bed.
"Get up and go home. I've about had enough of both of you."
The bird, Dobler regarded as one more manifestation of her squatter's rights: a spice rack, a vacuum cleaner, cans of diet supplement he extracted one day inside his golf bag. Symbols of her damn bulimia, he had figured, and tossed the cans under a hedge on the practice green.
He moved the birdcage to the balcony, padding in his bare feet across the wine stains on the tiles. He picked up Tara's underwear and put it on top of the cage. "Breathe deep, dumb ass. Your days are numbered too."
* * *
About the time Reagan went back to work, Tara turned up again—much too cheerful, way too thin, and too determined to track his blood spoor. She came into the Chevrolet dealership in a micro skirt and high-heel sandals. Dobler had a half-eaten filet of fish sandwich on his desk. He didn't act surprised to see her.
She crossed her legs and on the high ridge of her bare thigh she placed a door key and pressed it into her flesh. "I've still got a way in. So do you. If you're interested, that is."
He was solitary and bored. He succumbed.
Several days later, he wasn't thrilled about the prospect of taking her to a party of former teaching peers, but there was no one else and he invited her anyway. On top of that, a tropical storm had blown through, and it was an awful night to be out on the streets.
Dobler braked, popped the car door and watched Tara's long legs climb in. Her heels dug into the newspapers on the floorboard.
"So today the boss had this great idea—a thousand dollar bonus to anyone who quit smoking. Until he said that if we started smoking again, we had to give the thousand back. So I thought, hell, I'll take the thousand and smoke on my own time. How is he to know?"
"Uh, yeah."
Dobler was driving a car lot loaner, and its interior had absorbed flood waters. He cracked a window and they drove suspended in this ambiance.
"That smell in here. What is it? Mildew?"
He hated that habit of hers, that exaggerated Southern accent, the way she drew out that last syllable. "Mil-duuuu."
"Couldn't you get a car that stayed dry?"
"Not many did. Quit griping."
Dobler was maneuvering the freeway ramp when Tara shifted radically in the passenger seat.
"What the hell are you doing?" he said.
Her dress was hiked up, no hose, her black spiked heel tapped outside on the side-view mirror.
"Putting my foot out the window."
"Why?
"I like the breeze. How it feels on me."
"I think we better skip the drinks. We're running behind."
Tara put one hand on one hip and managed to look demanding despite the one foot out the window. "I simply won't go over there without a drink."
They arrived late, after salad. Phil and Leslie met them at the door laughing and holding their dinner napkins. They refused to let Dobler explain his embarrassment. There were empties on the table. The wine had been flowing pretty well.
The Whites were also there—Peter and Sally—sitting with inquisitive looks. The room was lit with candles.
"Minor problem," Phil said. "No power and no water."
"Please excuse the bathroom," Leslie said, holding her hands together.
"And no one flush," Phil added.
Tara gave Dobler a wilting look.
"Grab a plate. Hey, guys. The Chevy man is here with Tara."
They ate quietly while Leslie and Sally talked. Whenever Leslie said something as if to make a point, she ran her fingers lightly along Sally's bare arm.
"I did the recital and, bingo, I got the gig," said Sally.
Leslie took Sally's wrist and drew little circles on it with her thumb.
"Oh, that's excellent."
Peter White swallowed a piece of steak. He pointed his napkin at Tara.
"Sally has learned how the singing voice must resonate inside the head."
"Oh," Tara said.
Dobler had two large glasses of wine in a matter of minutes.
Phil brought out another bottle. "More wine, professor?"
After dinner, Phil and Leslie played the piano, and Sally White sang and then accompanied them on flute. Peter White brought out his violin and did a solo piece. Tara had left the room and was gone, Dobler sensed, a bit too long. On her return, she sat on fireplace mantle and lit a cigarette.
"We really aren't smokers," Leslie said.
"The chimney will take it out," Tara said.
"There's no fire to make it draw, dear," Sally White said.
"Well, I guess I could go outside," Tara snapped.
Dobler cornered her alone in the kitchen. "What's wrong with you?"
"She annoys me."
"We're their guests for God's sake."
"Okay, okay."
"Did you put something up your nose when you were in the bathroom?"
"All I did was try to go to the john," she said. "It's a mess in there."
"Just overlook it for a while."
"But I needed to throw up."
"Okay," Dobler said. "Let's leave. Now."
Dobler forced a smile and saluted them good-bye. Peter White did not look up from the map. Sally patted Leslie inside her thigh and got up to remove her flute from its case. Leslie took to the piano bench, her back against them. She began to play "Roll Out the Barrels," in a slow tempo. Sally joined in with a bluesy flute counter-melody.
In the car, Tara chain-smoked.
"I appreciate their talent but they're really not my kind of people. What were we supposed to do? Get up and dance? I can't play anything and you—well, what do you know? How to put in a car stereo? What a joke."
"They're people on the faculty, for Christ's sake," Dobler said.
"You're not a teacher there anymore, so what?"
"I might be again one day."
"They wanted us to swing, I think."
"That's preposterous."
"And we might have gone for it, wouldn't we, if Leslie had liked me. But she was into Sally."
The thought was arousing to Dobler, but could not catch fire in the wash of his anger. "That was not the scene at all. Is that your idea of a common denominator?"
"A what?"
* * *
A few days later, Dobler found an envelope with a pink slip sitting in his sparse cube. He rolled the paper up and jammed it into an electric pencil sharpener.
He left at lunch and drank beer all afternoon. Back at the apartment complex, he pissed in the parking lot between cars. Crewcut came around the corner a moment too late to make accusations.
Dobler unlocked the door and went inside. The stereo was blaring Eric Clapton's "I Shot the Sheriff" and he entertained a momentary illusion that Tara wasn't really there. No, not today please. But he could hear her singing along:
—but I did not shoot the Dep-u-teeeee—
"What is that?" he called to her. "It smells like tar or creosote or something."
"Hi, honey," she called from behind the door.
That accent again, he thought: "Seff de-fen-yunse." He eased his way into the bathroom. She was soaking in the bath, one hand held protectively between her legs.
"It's this medicine in the water. I think I got the scabies from some old Goodwill clothes I bought."
"I bet," he said.
"Okay. Your Leslie friend gave it to me."
"Funny. You keeping secrets?"
"If I went with her, I'd like it too much to come back to you."
"Bitch."
"Calm down. It probably was the clothes I wore for St. Patty's. That's all."
"That was a month ago."
"Then take my first story."
"You're impossible. I guess you realize that I'll have them too."
"I'm here to share the cure, honey."
"You're all heart."
"The itch starts around the belt line, they say."
"Great, just great." Dobler started removing his shirt and walked toward the balcony.
"There's room for two in here."
"I'm getting some whisky."
He quietly opened the sliding doors and took the cage off its hook, lifted the gate, and then shook it. The parakeet hung to the side of the cage and craned its neck questioningly. Dobler shook again, and the bird took off, winging its way zig-zag across the courtyard, then found its lift and soared over the pecan trees beyond.
"Everything all right out there?"
"Dropped the ice. I'll be there in a second." He put the cage back on its hook and left the gate down, as if it had been an accident.
He went inside the bathroom carrying the bottle of whiskey and slammed the door behind him. The medicine cabinet popped open in contempt.
"God, when will it end," he said.
"Did you forget the gram?"
"What gram?"
"The one I put it in the bag next to your rowing machine."
"You go."
"Be good and go get it. I'm all wet and naked," she smiled.
He went out to get the gram, came back and stripped down. He took a deep breath before he joined Tara in the tub. 
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