“My wife,” said Pinnegar, “expects to see me go to the
dogs when she leaves me. It is her last hope.”
D. H. Lawrence, “Jimmy and the Desperate Woman”

 

 

She gave me the car and two
hundred dollars. Said, So long, baby.
Take it easy, hear? So much
for twenty years of marriage.
She knows, or thinks she knows,
I’ll go through the dough
in a day or two, and eventually
wreck the car—which was
in my name and needed work anyway.
When I drove off, she and her boy-
friend were changing the lock
on the front door. They waved.