Keeping vigil over her are two monsters of very different breeds but monster just the same. Death on her left. Devil on her right.

Now you know how I justify my addictions—if I can pay less for it than I would at Wal-Mart, I get to have it.

There should be a vaccine against Adam Black. And all women should be given it at birth.

I looked from one to the other, and realized that Barrons and my dad were having one of those wordless conversations he and I have from time to time. Though the language was, by nature, foreign to me, I grew up in the Deep South where a man’s ego is roughly the size of his pickup truck, and women get an early and interesting education in the not-so-subtle roar of testosterone.

Regardless of how many people I surrounded myself with, no matter how many friends and family I loved and was loved by in return, I was alone at the moment of being born and at the moment of dying. Nobody came with you and nobody went with you. It was a journey of one.

Nuns? They'd take one look at Barrons and decide the devil himself had come knockng. He not only looked dangerous, he emanated something that made even me feel like crossing myself sometimes, and I'm not religious.

Keeping vigil over her are two monsters of very different breeds but monster just the same. Death on her left. Devil on her right.