RELIQUARY

He knew it was bad when Thora, who lived a thirty-minute seventy miles-per-hour drive outside of town, arrived at his place a scant eight minutes after phoning him. The knuckles rapping out “shave and a haircut” against his apartment door despite the presence of a perfectly functional and melodious doorbell could belong to no one else.

Alton, tired as always of being a patsy, opened the door, unable as always to do otherwise. Such was the natural order of his relationship with Thora; her sailor’s sense of humor and trophy wife physical characteristics, occasions to which Alton always rose lusting. To believe, though, that the term “relationship” could be applied to him and Thora in anything other than the loosest and most generous of regards, he’d have been twice the fool. Luckily for him, no such delusion had ever distorted his view.

“I hope you’re still a Jim Beam man,” she said, bounding across his threshold before he could greet her.

“It’s that bad, is it?” he asked the air as she made for the bottles of liquor that she knew he kept in his kitchen…