the best I can. especially what you wish they would. And. Maybe she sensed something about him. At last he rocks forward again and.

pressing upon him
pressing upon him. With steak. and she was alone with Nelson. wide Weiser Street which he can remember lit up and as crowded as a fairgrounds in Christmas season." "I bet it does. Good luck. The cut means you have to shave the sides off your pussy. even when we can't see it. back there in home ec. He used to fuck Jill that crazy summer. "Honey. was as foolish. Another beachgoer has momentarily called him away.

and buildings that he felt when a boy were widely spaced now appear adjacent. on the edge of developments old and new. there is just a single high counter. so his tongue feels the texture of the fissure." Harry says. He could almost cry. This noon when he called from a pay phone in Brewer he expected her to answer and she did. he gravitates to Mt. Ask Charlie. She became a doctor. Before Christmas. Something to drink Charlie asks her for a Perrier with lime. in a lowered voice.

"Harry. I'm trying to read the paper. What makes it worth it? Pru says your unpaid bills are piling way up. "Oh. of seaweed. that's considered cool. as she had hoped. when you think of all the things you'll never do that you always thought vaguely you might. Janice is rich. You might get to Portugal yet. he must be just trying to pass. "Janice. the bank bams put together with pegs and beams and the farmhouses built square to the compass with walls two feet thick.

it feels too deep." "Don't be so prejudiced. You think you've made a mistake. but these are not perhaps such gentlemen. just like her mother. She hesitates. "Nothing to do with the metals slump. and a lesion at a bifurcation is tougher to treat with angioplasty. She won't give up. the drug runs him. and spreads them to feel air between. How does it feel?" "What feel?" "Being so close to. along with the sun wrinkles.

to the right. Charlie's just an old friend. have subsided. I think. You ought to see Nelson when he's down there in Florida and has to live with me a little. The dashboard is a disaster. after not enjoying the one he just snuffed out. and the LAD depending on the restenosis. That's hang?it?up time." Nelson in exasperation slaps his body back into the chair. What have they done to you. Bottoms." "Like Daddy?" "I don't think of your daddy as ornery.

like booths in a restaurant. unable to loosen up. even if you do think you're running it half the year." As the water in the percolator comes to a boil. it makes Roy's eyes water to think of it. He asks his daughter?in?law. You've heard he's into cocaine Mm. From the numb look of his prick Roy will be a solid citizen. he doesn't know little girls. Judge. he can observe through the makeup she uses to soften her butterfly rash." "I bet it does. Some people swing by every day to see what's up for grabs.

with the same short upper lip." But he does look dimly familiar. Poppyseed. I don't even know how you take it ? up the nose or smoke it or what you put it in to smoke it or any of that. Chiropractix. slugged his five hundredth home run. where the kid has to look at them every day." "We need it." "Well. This is still spring." he says proudly. I suppose their hearts failed in the end but so does everybody's. Poor beauty.

there's a lot of disasters lately That Pan Am plane blowing up. It gets in every-where." But the connection feels strained. I can't believe I won't make it. they can do four. He's embarrassed to call her. trusting in God. "Was she younger than you or older?" "Younger. stylish big structures in smoked glass. Loosen up. Janice visits him Saturday. He says it's all the same to him." "Oh Harry.

Brewer was his boyhood city. across a glass?enclosed second?story pedestrian bridge." Pru says." "Why the fuck not? What's the fucking harm if I do?" "You'll come on too strong. and has to keep testing her. "One doc told me I have an athlete's heart. making him think of the pond when Ed's ball skipped in. "That disease he has does an awful job on you." Harry says. tell you? It's not the kind of thing they have cards for in the drugstore. which is fine and dandy as long as the welldeveloped collateral is supplying the right ventricle from the circumflex. Her face when she's sore becomes a kind of shield pressing at him. so she knows the way into the parking garage.

" Pru says." Janice says. In the wash of light his skin looks transparent. like Dad does. don't bother to shave. tepid gray like this terminal where people blow through like dust in an air duct. then. He needed to stay where they remembered him when." "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. made a statement." he offers. oilclothy. "Pru doesn't let me eat junk like that.

" "You look exhausted. "I tell him. is all. Max Robinson the nation's first and only black national anchorman and Roy Orbison who always wore black and black sunglasses and sang "Pretty Woman" in that voice that could go high as a woman's and then before Christmas that Pan Am Flight 103 ripping open like a rotten melon five miles above Scotland and dropping all these bodies and flaming wreckage all over the golf course and the streets of this little town like Glockamorra. He tries to play along. The world that grownups construct for themselves seems such an extravagant creation that malice might well be its motive. in her dress and tan. she shouldn't wear all those earrings and go so heavy on the makeup. and Mrs. just. it's all over the street these last couple years. the loot of all those lifetimes flooding the sandy low land. and I had no idea you'd hop into bed with Melanie.

Which is why Harry and Janice spend half the year in Florida ? so Nelson can have free run of the lot. as he knows because he is moved enough to pull the Celica to the curb and park and get out and pull off a single leaf to study. #413. In little black elastic European?style trunks and a hooded sweatshirt bearing the five?sided Omni logo. "how's the car business?" "You know as well as I do. sir. fringed at each story with balconies like fine?toothed red combs. Then as now. Pru says. but maybe people are less superstitious than they used to be. all of her his own. and used to shop for quick necessities at that corner store there. feels hot.

which he can't see; but he supposes the effort of his small demonstration is showing up in his running cardiogram. Her hair is what gets me. You take care of yourself. After dinner Janice likes to watch Jeopardy! even though she never knows any of the answers. though it's a Camry station wagon that takes six comfortably; Nelson likes to do his own thing. he had wanted to embower her as his princess. "The bastard. but now say You've Got a Friend in Pennsylvania. Remember how you used to always sing. Rabbit thinks. that he has totally renovated. I went over there last week to have it out with him about cocaine. It broke me all up.

"If Roy goes I'm not going. she couldn't have been more than fifteen. A colorful octagonal nook of a shop selling newspapers and magazines and candy and coral souvenirs and ridiculous pastel T?shirts saying what bliss southwestern Florida is interrupts the severe gray spaces of the airport. I'll feed Roy some applesauce to hold him. her tallowy willing body. Being with you is such a relief." he says. Georgie. what to put in the windows. upstairs. Where the dye is being pumped through. but you're not in my shoes." "Why the fuck not? What's the fucking harm if I do?" "You'll come on too strong.

Then he thinks of going back and buying another for his grandchildren and him to share in the car? "Look what Grandpa has!" as they turn onto Interstate 75 ? but doesn't trust himself not to eat it all and makes himself stand and look out the window instead. those little HIVs sneak right through. I said we wanted to look over the accounts since October and he said the accounts were mostly in these computer disks he keeps at his house and he was too sick to see us today. She doesn't smile much. And also in the Fort Myers News?Press this morning an item about a pregnant woman over in Fort Lauderdale shot in an attempted robbery yesterday. Rabbit thinks when the doctor is gone from the room." he says." "We heard about it from little Ron. "I've always tried to do the best I can. especially what you wish they would. And. Maybe she sensed something about him. At last he rocks forward again and.