Under Cover of Daylight by James W. Hall Page B

she’s not against sex, but it’s got to have a born-again thing in it. She read and read this book, and she said, ‘Well, maybe it has some Bible references and maybe it doesn’t.’ ”
    Thorn laughed.
    “Well, look at you,” Sugarman said, reaching out and touching a finger to Thorn’s bruised cheekbone. “I heard about this. Those wood rat meetings can get rough.”
    “Some nail whacker,” said Thorn. “Giving Kate a hard time.”
    “You got to keep your left higher,” Sugarman said.
    “Kate’s coaching me already.” Thorn looked down at the darkened knuckles on his right hand. “So,” he said, “what else is new on the Jeannie front? You getting that worked out?”
    “I’ll tell you, Thorn. It’s just more horny ideas every day. This week it was all One Corinthians, Chapter Twelve.” Sugarman drummed his fingers on the stone table, looked off at the bay. “About how there’s parts of the body we think of as inferior, but God wants us to honor them, which she takes to mean my pecker. And I’m saying there’s nothing inferior about my pecker, and she says that’s exactly right, and she won’t be satisfied until she’s spent half the night down there, between my legs, doing everything she can think of to honor my pecker, talking to it, for chrissakes.”
    Trying to set a serious look on his face, Thorn said, “What’s she say to it?”
    “I don’t know,” Sugarman said. Worn out thinking about it. “She’s down there talking to it, I can’t hear her. She might have been praying with it.”
    “Maybe you should just lean back, enjoy it for what it is. Stop making a deal out of it.”
    “Yeah, I know.” Sugarman stood up, combed his fingers through his hair. “This new minister at the church, Robert Redford type, he’s got them in Bible study groups, all talking about sex and marriage and the kind of stuff you never thought you’d hear in a church.”
    “California comes to Key Largo,” Thorn said. “It’ll be hot-tub baptisms before you know it.”
    “I guess it’s OK,” Sugarman said. “It’s sure perked up our sex life.” He picked up the book again, looked at the jacket photo. Fanned himself with the book.
    Thorn said, “You know, there are those would doubt you. Who’d think you are fantasizing all this about Jeannie being a born-again nympho to cover up an empty sex life?”
    “You want to see my pecker? It’s in shreds. She’s like this for, what, five months almost? In heat and more heat.” Sugarman took his eyes out of focus, seemed to be revisiting the recent past.
    “Or maybe you could just tell her straight out it’s too much for you. That you’d rather go bowling. Maybe that’s the thing, get her out bowling.” Thorn thought, Good God, bowling!
    Sugarman gave Thorn a halfhearted smile. “I couldn’t do that. It’s a religious thing now. It’d be like I didn’t believe in God or something. What was it two weeks ago? Still Corinthians, Fifteen or something, that week it was about celestial bodies and terrestrial bodies and how there is glory in both of them. Glory, glory. I was in pain. That week, bad pain.”
    “Well,” Thorn said. “I don’t know, man, I’m having a problem working up a lot of sympathy here. Maybe she just loves you. Ever think of that? Just loves you a whole lot.”
    He considered it and said, “Yeah, well. It’s not that bad, I guess. She’s always there, cooks good, interested in my work, who’s been beating up their wife, who’s been brawling at the Caribbean Club. All the gossip. I never knew, man, how much gossip there was before I took this job.”
    “Well, quit complaining so much,” Thorn said, feeling a grin take shape. “Glory?”
    “She’d yell it out. I shouldn’t be telling you this stuff. But she’d yell out, ‘Glory, glory.’ Bucking around, ‘glory, glory.’ ”
    “Stop, stop.”
    “How about you? We never talk about you, man. What’re you hiding these days?”
    “You mean, do I invite