No longer secured, the winnings, a pile of filthy and decrepit clothes, hunker on the tabletop, hung over chairs and disregarded on the floor. When I posted my bets, with a prudent reluctance, I thoroughly expected to come away with all the spoils. This, for me has not got on so well.

Since my last sorry hand, my partner has been rolled out of his seat and laid over the lawn of burnt orange shag. Pretending thoughtfulness or sleep.

I can imagine Earl growing, by the moment, more rotund in his cherished respite, for he is not one to handicap himself by refraining from the passions of appetite. I gather the dregs of this ruefulness up in my arms for comfort.

In being relegated to this oppressive Floridian environment, I have begun, again, to perspire in patches too numerous as to list. To be frank, I am not unsightly, though vaguely soft in the areas of American importance. Quickly, I become suspect that I am the hind quaters of a suspicious maligning tonight.

For the Queen Tart Sheila and her evenings consort/conquest Ingred whisper face to face through loose and falling hair, with one hand placed on the others naked thigh, and they titter expansively. Their female intentions are either apparently spirited, or a lacking in certain solid judgment, but then the soft properties of alcohol have burned away any reasonable amount of playfulness, on my part.

This roughens my mood, and apparently the shame grows on my face. Oh, the Queen Tart, who has been shorn of every prudent garment, calls to me, her voice is sing song sweet, through my fog. Glancing at her wall clock and gesturing, I submit my attention to her tinted lips and lost men's undershirt, and my gaze falls away again. The tart beckons me to listen, a second or third time, as my feet become entwined in one of her abandoned garments. I feign befuddlement, with great success, and move as if a tortoise to the other end of the room.