Before unlocking his workshop he set the alarm on his watch to go off at lunchtime. If he worked through lunch he might miss his nap. There was no sense in wasting the day just because the wife was out of town.

When the knock came on his workshop door, Effrom thought at first that the wife had come home early to surprise him with lunch. He ground out his cigarette in an empty toolbox that he kept for that purpose. He blew the last lungful of smoke into the exhaust fan he had installed “to take out the sawdust.”

“Coming. Just a minute,” he said. He revved up one of his high-speed polishing tools for effect. The knocking continued and Effrom realized that it was not coming from the inside door that the wife usually knocked on, but from the one leading out into the front yard. Probably Jehovah’s Witnesses. He climbed down from his stool, checked the pockets of his corduroys for quarters, and found one. If you bought a Watchtower from them, they would go away, but if they caught you without spare change, they would be on you like soul-saving terriers.

Effrom threw the door open and the young man outside jumped back. He was dressed in a black sweatshirt and jeans — rather casual, Effrom thought, for someone carrying the formal invitation to the end of the world.

“Are you Effrom Elliot?” he asked.

“I am.” Effrom said. He held out his quarter. “Thanks for stopping by, but I’m busy, so you can just give me my Watchtower and I’ll read it later.”

“Mr. Elliot, I’m not a Jehovah’s Witness.”

“Well, I have all the insurance I can afford, but if you leave me your card, I’ll give it to the wife.”

“Is your wife still alive, Mr. Elliot?”

“Of course she’s alive. What did you think? I was going to tape your business card to her tombstone? Son, you’re not cut out to be a salesman. You should get an honest job.”

“I’m not a salesman, Mr. Elliot. I’m an old friend of your wife’s. I need to talk to her. It’s very important.”

“She ain’t home.”

“Your wife’s name is Amanda, right?”

“That’s right. But don’t you try any of your sneaky tricks. You ain’t no friend of the wife or I’d know you. And we got a vacuum cleaner that’d suck the hide off a bear, so go away.” Effrom started to close the door.

“No, please, Mr. Elliot. I really need to speak to your wife.”

“She ain’t home.”

“When will she be home?”

“She’s coming home tomorrow. But I’m warning you, son, she’s even tougher than I am on flimflam men. Mean as a snake. You’d be best to just pack up your carpetbag and go look for honest work.”

“You were a World War One veteran, weren’t you?”

“I was. What of it?”

“Thank you, Mr. Elliot. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Don’t bother.”

“Thank you, Mr. Elliot.”

Effrom slammed the door. His angina wrenched his chest like a scaly talon. He tried to breathe deeply while he fingered a nitroglycerin pill from his shirt pocket. He popped it into his mouth, and it dissolved on his tongue immediately. In a few seconds the pain in his chest subsided. Maybe he would skip lunch today, go right to his nap.

Why the wife kept sending in those cards about insurance was beyond him. Didn’t she know that “no salesman will call” was one of the three great lies? He resolved again to give her hell when she got home.

When Travis got back into the car, he tried to hide his excitement from the demon. He fought the urge to shout “Eureka!” to pound on the steering wheel, to sing hallelujah at the top of his lungs. It might finally be coming to an end. He wouldn’t let himself think about it. It was only a long shot, but he felt closer than he ever had to being free of the demon.

“So, how’s your old friend?” Catch said sarcastically. They had played this scene literally thousands of times. Travis tried to assume the same attitude he always had when faced with those failures.

“He’s fine,” Travis said. “He asked about you.” He started the car and pulled away from the curb slowly. The old Chevy’s engine sputtered and tried to die, then caught.

“He did?”

“Yeah, he couldn’t understand why your mother didn’t eat her young.”

“I didn’t have a mother.”

“Do you think she’d claim you?”

Catch grinned. “Your mother wet herself before I finished her.”

The anger came sliding back over the years. Travis shut off the engine.

“Get out and push,” he said. Then he waited. Sometimes the demon would do exactly what he said, and other times Catch laughed at him. Travis had never been able to figure out the inconsistency.

“No,” Catch said.

“Do it.”

The demon opened the car door. “Lovely girl you’re going out with tonight, Travis.”

“Don’t even think about it.”

The demon licked his chops. “Think what?”

“Get out.”

Catch got out. Travis left the Chevy in drive. When the car started moving, Travis could hear the demon’s clawed feet cutting furrows in the asphalt.

Just one more day. Maybe.

He tried to think of the girl, Jenny, and it occurred to him that he was the only man he had ever heard of who had waited until he was in his nineties before going on his first date. He didn’t have the slightest idea why he had asked her out. Something about her eyes. There was something there that reminded him of happiness, his own happiness. Travis smiled.

12

JENNIFER

When Jennifer arrived home from work, the phone was ringing. She ran to the phone, then stopped with her hand on the receiver, checked her watch, and decided to let the answering machine get it. It was too early to be Travis.

The machine clicked and began its message, Jennifer cringed as she heard Robert’s voice on the answer tape. “You’ve reached the studios of Photography in the Pines. Please leave your name and number at the tone.”

The machine beeped and Robert’s voice continued, “Honey, pick up if you’re there. I’m so sorry. I need to come home. I don’t have any clean underwear. Are you there? Pick up, Jenny. I’m so lonely. Call me, okay? I’m still at The Breeze’s. When you get in-”

The machine cut him off.

Jennifer ran the tape back and listened to the other messages. There were nine others, all from Robert. All whining, drunken, pleading for forgiveness, promising changes that would never happen.

Jenny reset the machine. On the message pad next to the phone she wrote, “Change message on machine.” There was a list of notes to herself: clean beer out of refrigerator; pack up darkroom; separate records, tapes, books. All were designed to wash reminders of Robert out of her life. Right now, though, she needed to wash the residue of eight hours of restaurant work off her body. Robert used to grab her and kiss her as she came in the door. “The smell of grease drives me mad,” he’d say.

Jenny went to the bathroom to run her bath. She opened various bottles and poured them into the water: Essential Algae, revitalizes the skin, all natural. “It’s from France,” the clerk had said with import, as if the French had mastered the secret of bathwater along with the elements of rudeness; a dash of Amino Extract, all vegetable protein in an absorbable form. “Makes stretch marks as smooth as if you’d spackled them,” the clerk had said. He’d been a drywall man moonlighting at the cosmetic counter and was not yet versed in the nomenclature of beauty. Two capfuls of Herbal Honesty, a fragrant mix of organically grown herbs harvested by the loving hands of spiritually enlightened descendants of the Mayans. And last, a squeeze of Female E, vitamin E oil and dong quai root extract, to bring out the Goddess in every woman. Rachel had given her the Female E at the last meeting of the Pagan Vegetarians for Peace when Jenny had consulted the group about divorcing Robert. “You’re just a little yanged out,” Rachel had said. “Try some of this.”