There’s times you got to make a decision, when you open up your eyes and realize things can’t go on as they been without something falling by the wayside. Either you choose the only real happiness you felt in years, or you cut it off an’ spend the rest of your life wondering what might have happened if you hadn’t been such a cream puff.

I chose Lorraine.

The two of us watched the sun go down that night, Wednesday night, her smiling and snuggling up to my side, me fighting my conscience wondering where I was going to find five thousand dollars for the woman and what she needed it for anyway.

It was a test o’ my love, she said. It don’t matter what it’s for, just that I can show I care. And then she said the only part I really heard, that she was mine, forever. Forever. And that was the best sunset I ever seen, me an’ Lorraine, in love and watching the color drain from the sky like the last scene of a movie.

If I knew what was coming the next day, I wouldn’t have slept at all. As it were, I slept great.