The two days went by in a fight with the elements. There was a train strike. Logo lay in bed halfway through the week, thinking idly about which of his half-clean clothes he should wear today. The texture of the sheets on which he lay reminded him of his own neglect since his feet lay in gritty socks on a gritty patch of sheet. He had never been so lazy in the days of Mrs Logo’s sloppy dominance, but the abandonment by women had come to equal dirt and somehow, in the last three weeks, he was even dirtier. The Bible, through which he flipped for something bo do with his cold hands as well as to search for passages to soothe his soul, was symptomatic of the change. The pages were as rippled as the surface of a pond and still smelt of stale whisky. Deuteronomy, chapter twenty-two, verse twenty-three. ‘If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed … and a man find her in the city and lie with her; Then ye shall bring them both out into the gate of the city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die … the damsel because she cried not …’ He flipped back through the wavy pages, some of them stuck, so that he could read one side but not the verses which followed, which suited him fine.
