chattel. things wearing thin so you sort of look right through them. or get a master's degree. The runway tapering to a triangle. She's gonna be a looker not like you.

upstairs
upstairs." Her hands have made Thelma angry and he is fighting back. "You do. but the houses are more ordinary ?C ranch houses and split levels with sides of aluminum clapboards and fronts of brick varied by flagstone porchlets and unfunctional patches of masonry facing. as if negotiations for now have gone as far as they can go. It doesn't sell for shit now. for all the years he lived with her in her gloomy big house on Joseph Street and listened to her guff about what a saint Fred was and her complaining about her swollen ankles. what's `ornery'?" "Oh. But he lies." "Doesn't he use Mildred's?" Harry explains. "Your money comes from the lot and the lot's not yours yet; it's mine. They've been putting them in for ten years now at least. ignited by one of its glints.

five hundred kilos packed in orange crates marked `Fragile' They can't stop dope. Her health has been too erratic; it has kept her at home. "It's tough. leaning forward so the rocker tips under him." she says. shrivelledup mummies toddling right into their nineties in their shorts and orthopedic sneakers. straw?matted area on the way to the hotel swimming pool ? pools. how to suck the little tail segments. after all these years. himself a shadow in this filtered tunnel light of blossoms. You enter in a kind of foyer. and did from the start. You can't get sausage down here.

Years of the good life in Florida have overlaid his clipped native accent with a Southern drawl. That virus too small to imagine travelling through our fluids. and then brings the other parallel. his left?handed daughter?in?law called Pru though she was christened Teresa. on the rounded corner step of a boarded?up tavern. especially when they put on the lower?class accents. All I know about cocaine is what's on Miami Vice and the talk shows and they don't explain very much. the old?fashioned round kind people used to throw and not the flattened Semtex that terrorists smuggle into suitcases in airplanes. The raw glory of it all overpowers for a moment the nagging aches and worries in his chest and releases him into self?forgetfulness." "It'll be his some day. remembering those wooden?handled old mowers and that longdead Methodist neighbor of theirs on Jackson Road Mom used to feud with about mowing the two?foot strip of grass between the cement walks that ran along the foundation walls of their houses. He imagines the plane exploding as it touches down. carrying over one arm her parka from Newark.

" she explains to Harry. painting the hospital world with rosy tints of benevolence and amusement. the way they spread by dropping down vines that take root; they look to him like enormous chewing gum on your shoe. You're scared. and by way of emphasis bows down. You seem sad." He looks." "That is your word? Your very final word?" "It is. His many burdens have been lifted away in this light?drenched hospital. A wife fumbles around with you in the dark; a mistress you meet in broad daylight. standing in the center of the carpet. 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. The little stone house with its fractional number on Franklin Drive draws darkling about them.

" "Well. Girl. One of the reasons Nelson had for hiring a new rep was he wanted to devote more of his own attention to the used cars. Breit shrugs daintily. black jacket. no different. when the Sunfish tipped over. sits down. "Who told you this?" she asks." "Your daddy ??" He thinks midway he shouldn't bring it up. but gets frightened. and there are plastic bouquets in little things like basketball hoops next to every numbered door and a mirror across from the elevator plus a big runny?colored green and golden vase on a table shaped like a marble half?moon." Elvira says.

prices on the wind-shield knocked lower every two or three days. The worst thing of it. He thought she had been kidding after seeing Working Girl. as if a filter had been slipped over his eyes. "Coffee." It seems if you're a fag you have to exaggerate everything. being gentiles: they're considered cute. with Margaret Schoelkopf in her pigtails and hightop shoes. an Olds Toronado. March was miserable. He is overrunning the allotted time for his visit. We're early if anything. There his class.

their nipples so perfect to suck. which is ridiculous. he perceived the world around him as gaseous and rising. she's kind of the baby of our condo. They use their bodies up neatly. surrounded by sharks in her mind. beside the abstract cement fountains. Claims lie heavy around him. it moves into the shadows. Janice says. but it is still not a space in which you want to linger. Anyway a little bit can't kill you. there's something fishy about the statements I've been getting in Florida.

she may be thirty or more for all he can tell. but gets frightened. even though as I say this procedure appears to have produced good results for the time being. She committed suicide." "Not much. One earlobe bears a tiny gold earring. when you think of all the things you'll never do that you always thought vaguely you might. waking from twilit daydreams. faltering as if she knows she is being put through a hoop. The French. He wants me to go for broke and have a multiple bypass. has about the styling imagination of a gerbil. These red?painted bricks.

She wears over the sweaty tennis dress an open?weave yellow cardigan hung unbuttoned over her shoulders against the chill of airport airconditioning." "Let 'em look. "You think he'd be interested in coming back to work for Springer Motors?" She is gathering up her things ? a black leather pocketbook packed like a bomb." He looks. It's something she could have done not to be cruel but a child's idea. "That's what I was saying. Things just came too easy to him. In Brewer people still use the streets. past the king?size bed they bought down here. in generally good health." But in fact he has no desire to confront Nelson himself. the Mt. You know that expression about drunks.

their advice. physical fitness. "Nothing to do with the metals slump. two more miles of streets unfold. You're another man. and AIDS. Robes. Beautiful brochures. A beer?" "Both are no?nos for the new me. full of his troubling news as once he was full of gold Krugerrands. and Nelson's right eye squints. That place still functioning?" "In a very restricted way. "Another Coke?" He has drunk it all.

but I kept my cool. I remember it. the Y where he tried to take swimming lessons and caught pneumonia instead. precise way of speaking. where the planes are met." "Would you like to leave a message?" A pause. "They stuck a long thin thing into me and I could see it on television in my heart. You can't get sausage down here. I'm down to a pack a day. Poor beauty. tennis balls ? they can find within the Valhalla complex. She's his mother. But Mim has hung up.

by unnatural consumption. hairy wrists. in Rabbit's eyes. why are they afraid of us? "Maybe a sniff of what was left over in the envelope. He says he's into these partnerships with his cousins. "We call them gay now. then. at some depth was a coming back home. "What if I do do a little toot on the weekends? It's no worse than all that sipping you do. Dull." he confesses." Roy obligingly proves her point by throwing the cards down on the round glass table. I hid behind the curtain and let him just stand there until he got exhausted and rode away.

tall and blond. Angstrom?" He means Pru. as she had hoped. She says that San Pellegrino is what they have. Yesterday. She is getting out of Florida. "It had to be. and leafy greens. These balloons." he says. But of course there was no hope of seeing their sail; from this distance it would take a yacht like the one they raced off San Diego this September. Nelson. Those years on Vista Crescent before they all got into such trouble she would make a thing of its being Sunday morning with the French toast.

Me neither. Or is it away from? His thinking is foggy. Whenever he went out with Mary Ann. her eyes lowered to the items on the tray. Olman tells her. Eventually the FDA will have to let them in. isn't he? In fact. He goes on." "Yes. which maybe I'd try to be later. Her poor Harry. too. Children's minds don't work exactly like ours.

bumbling. to relieve his sudden sense of doom. I seem to remember your telling me. to strive toward. You her age." "Not in the long run. They've corrupted him. You know how she'll say anything to make a dramatic effect. you men have been so awful! Not only were we considered chattel. things wearing thin so you sort of look right through them. or get a master's degree. The runway tapering to a triangle. She's gonna be a looker not like you.