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      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      THIS STORY WOULD NOT HAVE SEEN PUBLICATION without the help of my wife, Noreen. For two and a half years she kept our home quiet in the mornings and showed me ways to tighten the story. She also conceived and took the cover photograph.

      Thanks to Woody Galloway for participating in the photograph and to my stepson, Brendan Ward, for painting the two large slogans that appear on the vehicles.

      I am also grateful to my Vermont College MFA professors, who shared their know-how for maximizing the impact that words can wield, and to the following individuals, who served as fact checkers: Tommy Archuleta, Mary Blisset, Dave Caldwell, Jane Clarke, Laura Cooley, Mary Joy Ford, Wendy Havlir, Juliana Henderson, Chip Lilienthal, Phil Loggains, Clint Marshall, Jan Nelson, Frank Ratliff, Rob Rikoon, John-Paul Ruch, Jeff Sand, Drew Scott, Daphne Sidor, Jennifer Sprague, Susan Tixier, Rick Tashi, and Rick Von Kaenel.

      Added thanks to Sunstone’s publisher, Jim Smith, for his enthusiasm about the manuscript; to Jim’s assistant, Carl Condit, for easing the trials of reaching publication; to Richard Lehnert for copyediting; to Ben Glass for proofreading; to Russel Stolins for formatting; and to Vicki Ahl for book design.

      CHARACTERS IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE

      Ronald (Big Shit) Kirkpatrick—mortgage broker

      Lila (Lile) Kirkpatrick—Ronald’s wife

      Manning (Manny) Barnes—marketing writer

      Maxine (Max) Morgan—real estate broker

      Joyce (Boodie) Hunt—Manny Barnes’s girlfriend

      Charles (Chuck) Ridley—CPA

      Helen Ridley—Chuck Ridley’s wife

      Alexis (Allie) Dahl—assists Chuck Ridley

      Bret Wilkes—CEO, encryption-software company

      Victor Valdez—handyman for Maxine Morgan

      Stu Fisher—handyman for Manny and Joyce

      Dirk Pellington—retired foreign correspondent

      Giordy Morgan—Maxine Morgan’s husband

      GOOD SEX

      “LILE, BABE, WE GONNA INDULGE IN A LITTLE HANKY-panky?”

      “If you’ll do me like I like it.”

      Ron and Lila Kirkpatrick had returned late from Mama Cheetah’s where they’d celebrated with filet mignon and fresh asparagus the cash bonus Ron had won as February’s Home Loan Champ. They’d dragged out dinner to calm Lila’s fury that two of the tiles in the upstairs bath—where Ron now sawed a conical brush between his teeth—had popped free of their mastic. Ron’s belly jiggled under the Go Lobos! T-shirt he liked to sleep in. The off-white tiles slanted up near him beside the toilet.

      As they talked, their next-door neighbor, Manny Barnes, in sheepskin, robe, and sweats, was sneaking round the embankment toward the white Cadillac Escalade that Ron had parked in the driveway rather than the garage so as not to wake Lila when he left for breakfast. Lila stood now in her black, see-through wrap lighting four votive candles. They surrounded a soapstone sculpture squatting on the glass table near the TV. She had thumbed the switch on its electrical cord to start a trickle of water past two bonsai pines when Ron yelled out:

      “Another’s poppin’, Lile; son of a peccary.”

      The hem of her wrap flapping, unveiling the skein of veins beginning to blue at the back of her knees, Lila ran barefoot across the blue pile that carpeted all twelve of the town houses dotting Plaza Hill, and stared in the direction of Ron’s thrust forefinger. The eight-by-eight tile rose on one edge like a trap door. It stopped a couple of inches above its bed of yellow mastic.

      With his left hand, Ron, gazing, hoisted his testicles against the bottom of his belly.

      “Here comes another!” Lila cried.

      His lips tight, her long jaw hanging, they goggled at what sounded like a pack rat gnawing through plasterboard as the edges of the tile facing the one just risen cracked their grout and broke free.

      “Ron, make them stop!”

      “Stop, you Comanche motherfuckers!”

      The tile halted just above its mates. Ron slammed the heel of his cowhide slipper to it as if it were a giant miller moth, cracking it in two.

      “What are you doing? Insurance has to see this. They won’t believe this. How can this be happening?”

      “We live on an Anasazi burial mound; the ancestors are strikin’ back.”

      “Fuck.” Lila swiped at her salt-and-pepper hair, yanked the black ribbon off her ponytail, and tossed it to the floor. Her hair fanned across her shoulders. “This goddamned town. Maybe I can stay married to you—don’t bother lowering your eyebrows—but putting up with Maxine Morgan convincing us to buy this heap of shit? I’m heading back to Fort Worth. I mean it, Ron. I’m not your trophy wife. I’ll drag us through a divorce that’ll flatten you like that toothpaste.”

      “Lile,