That’s all I know. It’s new.” I watched both the show and Chad. He had on only his pajama bottoms. His chest had almost no hair. His tummy was f...at – not six-pack fit, but no fat, either. I tried to remember boys I knew when I was that age, what they looked like, and I think they were much the same. I saw some breasts flash on the TV screen. “Oops,” Chad said and started to get up. I put a leg over his and said, “You’re sixteen, honey. I think you’re old enough to look at boobs.” He could have. Jimmy was one of those men who woman avoided. He was a single man in his thirties who never married but at one time or another had put the moves on all the women. Yet she had never given him a hard time and it was clear he worshiped her. So she sat with him and she felt comfortable in talking to him about her marriage and the fact she was there in hopes of making her husband jealous, they drank right up to closing time at one AM and Jimmy suggested they go to another bar that stayed open. He reached the curtains and parted them a little, allowing some light in. He stood there for a time. ‘Michael?’ His face turned slightly towards her, coldly illuminated by the pale morning sunlight. ‘I have to leave. My brother has gone missing in Iraq. I must inform his wife.’ She mouthed words that were utterly pointless. ‘Can you get me a towel from the bathroom?’, he added. ‘I’ve stepped in some broken glass.’ It had been two weeks since Lyla had waved goodbye to her husband, in the cool. And my bottom rolled... more vigorously.Jingle... jingle.. jingle... went the little bells.Oh the unbelievably inhuman dignity of it!One circuit...„Faster!“Thwack! Thwack!I increase the piston-like action of my limbs. I must keep the rhythm! Try... try! Think of nothing else. Only of that...Another circuit...„Faster!“And again...Thwack! Thwack!Oh dear God... is it possible?Yes... driven on my relentless pain... it is possible.I must make the effort. I must.My breath begins to rasp. The sweat.