Excerpt from Paint Your Wife by Lloyd Jones, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The next time I saw Frank was after Dougie and I left the train and followed the stationmaster's directions through a superhuman heat. There was a suburban iron fence, flat, unyielding and unimpressed by the oven-like heat; it was all that kept at bay the vastness of the desert, and beyond the fence stood mounds of piled soil and against them the insect-like shadows of huge mechanical diggers, all very still. Eventually we arrived at the address scribbled down on a scrap of paper I'd held in my hand as far back as the station. We put down our packs and stared at a movement in the window. We'd definitely seen it and since we hadn't seen another human being since leaving the station both our gazes stuck to the window. A moment later the door opened on a woman in calf-length slacks. She wore a white top, thin white shoulder straps, white on white, blonde hair out of a bottle, a face that once might have been pretty. She held a cigarette in her hand. Some time previously I had heard gossip that Frank and the woman from Wages had parted. But I hadn't stopped to think that there might be another woman. Over her shoulder we could see cool shadows. Now the woman pushed herself off the door jamb. She seemed curious, and then impatient. She called out to ask if we were coming in or not.

We picked up our packs and as we moved towards the door, the woman moved half into the blinding light where she stuck up a hand.

'You can stop there. I'm not running a motel. Just so you know.' Doug asked me to check the address again. In the few paces forward it hadn't changed but now he wanted to see for himself.

The woman said, 'All right I've had enough of this. You can fry out here or pay at the door and I'll tell you right now so that you know—I'm not interested in bullshit excuses or anything like that. Just so you know. I'm not interested in discussions. Just so we understand ourselves.'

Clearly there was a misunderstanding of major proportions. Either I had the wrong address or she had the wrong impression of what we were there for. But to check a final time I managed to ask her, 'Is this 11A?' before she snapped back with, 'No bartering, I thought I said, or stalling. Or negotiation or whatever you want to call it. And I'm not interested in standing out here and frying my arse for much longer.' She took a big steadying breath and after eyeballing us separately she said, 'Sort out who's first while I count to ten. After that the meter's running.'

That's when Doug told her, 'Harry's looking for his dad.'

The woman didn't say anything. She was staring at Dougie's face, so I was off the hook for the moment. She looked cross with what she found there. 'How old are yis?'

'Old enough,' said Dougie.

'What about him?'

She meant me but she was asking Doug.

'The same.' By now though I was craning my head back to see if there were any other 11As hidden further along the block. That's when the woman wriggled her thin hips. She smiled at Dougie. She said, 'I like you. What's your name?'

'Dougie.'

'Dougie,' she said. 'Isn't that a dog's name?' 'Must be. I'm here, aren't I?'

The woman found that funny. She gave Dougie's shoulder a friendly push. She said, 'I like you,' again. She stepped aside for Dougie to enter. But as I followed she blocked my way.

'Not you. You can bake in hell.'

That's when I told her that I thought my father lived there. I showed her the address I'd written down on the scrap of paper but she wouldn't look at it. She said, 'I don't have to look. I don't care what the damn paper says. It could say Queen Elizabeth lives here or Elizabeth Taylor. It could say George Washington himself lives here and I just fucked his bewigged brains out. I don't have to believe anything just because it's written down on a shitty piece of paper. Understood?'

Excerpted from Paint Your Wife by Lloyd Jones. Copyright © 2016 by Lloyd Jones. Excerpted by permission of Text Publishing Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.