The First Page of My New Novel

Sometime this morning, Win Muller had the thought, My dog doesn't worry about the price of gas, why should I?

It was shaping up to be the summer of anxieties and it was only May. People were speculating that oil prices weren't ever going to stop going up, and the Democratic nominees were exhausting everyone with their endless jabbering. Just this morning, waiting while his car got inspected, Win stood listening to the small creek that ran alongside his mechanic's garage when a minivan with a crisp Obama bumper sticker nearly backed into him. A man in a nylon windbreaker clutching the hand of a small child climbed into the minivan while an unseen Mommy behind the wheel put it in drive. All three Obama supporters peeled rubber out of the lot to start their day.

Win sometimes wondered what it would be like to be married to someone whose politics matched his own--his wife Seneca was a Republican, always had been. In the beginning the arguments were as spirited as the sex. These days they both knew each other's sore spots and stepped around them like piles of dirty laundry. Besides, Win had lost his teaching job last week, and there was no shortage of tension around the home front. Seneca had started whistling loudly and tunelessly whenever they were together, what Win privately thought of as Fantasia on the Speculation of My Decline. Only the dog, a husky/beagle mix that had come from the Humane Society with one blue eye and one brown eye, and answered to the name Kudzu--seemed to enjoy the whistling. Even the kids sat holding their ears at breakfast.