handle well and they last." "You mean." Janice says. Bette. inbred so much half are humpbacks and dwarfs.

but you've been terrific
but you've been terrific. you've got yours. which became the Caf?? Barcelona in the Seventies and then the Cr??pe House later in the decade and now has changed hands again and calls itself Salad Binge. You're the boss. Apparent's the key word. and there are two required and four electives to get this certificate. You can't grill me. He nuzzles one breast and closes his eyes again. Which is why Harry and Janice spend half the year in Florida ? so Nelson can have free run of the lot." "Nelson wouldn't steal from the company. and the sidewalks so hot a dog couldn't walk on them.

About once a week also they visit their bank in downtown Deleon. a little lament. The door to 413 has a double lock operated with two keys. Don't go."' Breit looks up through his furry eyelashes for the expected laugh. she thought they should hang the boy on the steps of the Capitol. perhaps. Carolyn Zim had been so pretty ? like Shirley Temple only without the dimple. and a row of little earrings all around the edge of one ear. through blocks of single?family houses with half?dead little front yards ornamented by plumes of pampas grass and flowering bushes on vacation from flowering in this dry butt?end of the year. and leafy greens.

which still excite him. So what did you say your verdict was Sometimes." she says. All this blaspheming Toyota makes Harry uneasy. huh?" he says. Personal problems. "And you're a lot like him in a lot of respects. She has home two babies and escorted both of her parents into the grave so she is not a total stranger to hospitals. se?or. and all the years since. "is you become harder to frighten.

as if she expects him to make an unsympathetic response. perhaps from the cortisone she takes. The government exaggerates. her deeply known presence stirs him. Just the other day they pulled Yogi Berra's kid in." "I've become very liberated. and a few desks. was there and when I asked to look at the books just about gave me the upyours sign and said I had to get Janice's sayso. The kid keeps sniffing. even the VW bug expressed something. Look at their pickup.

he wants to save it for when they both can focus. the red of the stoplights almost invisible. so they have the car there. virtually blinds you with its towering space and light. "I can only show the books to authorized persons. The reddish blankness behind his closed lids is restful after the incessant skidding sparks of the television set." she explains to Harry. Coronary bypass is what you want. "My husband the exception that proves the rule. and. there is a fairly new development called Arrowdale after the old Arrowhead Farm that was sold off by the nieces and nephews of the old spinster who lived there so many years and had wanted to leave it to some television evangelist as a kind of salvation park.

could have come out of Harry's adolescence. He answers. He tries to play along. but not quite. Ever since I can remember you've had a little glass next to you in the kitchen or wherever." he says. swordfish Cajun style and fillets of sole stuffed with mussels. not sinking into it but perching on the edge. There's a whole new younger crowd out at the Eagle now that dominates everything. and you step outside and to your surprise the sun is blazing. to say the least?" She flares a little; her lips pinch in and her face comes forward.

brought this close to the something neutral and undecided in her son's sexual nature ? something scared out of him ? and brings her legs up on the sofa under her. She is flicking silently back and forth between channels. but offhand they think at least one of the coronary arteries is plugged." He wants that pill. or when he can't hear her knocking around in the kitchen or upstairs above his head. When Gregg speaks." But saying this makes him feel so guilty he looks away. Charlie says. She looks not so different from how Judy looks in hers and not very much larger. Only Judy is in the living room. Little squeezy pains tease his ribs.

" Elvira adds. Olman tells her. clothed in the profoundly accustomed. His body has become a collection of dead sticks. and the LAD depending on the restenosis. Nelson seems to him strangely precise and indignant and agitated.T. I don't want to eat any junk. "Tell Nelson if you ever see him I like the new decor." she says. you sound like your mother.

proportionally. Today's sunbathers are arranging themselves and their equipment. leaving a little bit of dirt like on the pale Antron carpets back at 14Y2 Franklin Drive." But she takes the little girl by the hand and they go down the shiny rippled corridor looking for the room number. a land dingy with centuries of use. you do somebody and a potential sale more harm by not being clear than by speaking right out. Harry can even remember Bessie's mother's name. pink stripes with white collar and cuffs. "It's only your theory. You see the world the way it was meant to be. some straight and some curving.

something Harry could resent since Roy Lubell is a sorehead laid?off Akron steamfitter who didn't even come to the wedding and never did shit for his seven hungry kids. A little can die without your noticing. What's wrong with running your blood through a machine What else you think you are. If they're serious. please. "Maybe l'll come in the fall if you can last it out. talk about obscene." he says. "Where'd you get that idea?" "Daddy hates jail. For a woman it's power. just a perpetual two o'clock in the morning.

He doesn't remember robins as seeming such big fierce birds; this one looked the size of a crow. She made it. They keep wondering aloud why the officials don't call off the game." He says rapidly. had been processed by men and discarded." "It's my fucking whole neurological life doing it and has been doing it ever since you and I got hitched up; it's having a holierthan?thou wife with the sex drive of a frozen yogurt now that she's got all the babies she wants. "And what did Lyle say then?" "He said we shall see. coming back twice for things they forgot and forgetting two flippers and a bottle of sun lotion anyway." Moving and speaking in a relaxed thorough way that suggests his whole day could happily be devoted to them. "Fifty?six." Her buttocks under his hands tense; he feels them squeeze together and become more spherical.

looking up at our windows. it was so underpowered they had to come with a V?6 engine that turns out to be a guzzler ? fourteen miles to the gallon. shedding its wings. his voice seems too young for his age; his curls hold bits of gray and his smile rouses creases in the sunbeaten face. coasting along on the old. your father was trying to be considerate about the sleeping arrangements. They handle well and they last." "You mean." Janice says. Bette. inbred so much half are humpbacks and dwarfs.