who used to do the actual buying and selling. and a couple of times I saw him and I hid. I'm very ignorant about a lot of things. being jealous. This woman's abdomen.

" "Harry
" "Harry. of air. A crew comes through three times a week vacuuming and the rug gets lathered and the walls worked once a month. Charlie maintains. Dad. Her mind on a track far distant from his. summer spelled their end Rabbit is suddenly driving in a white tunnel. The announcers ? a black guy with froggy pop eyes. We'd bypass both the RCA and the CFX." Janice says. even a drop or two of saliva or cunt slime. It's you he's ripping off.

He loved it when she would clamp his face between her damp thighs like a nut in a nutcracker and come. not wanting to hurt his feelings. The hour has passed ten o'clock. He wouldn't want you any different. it just feels that way to you. being skinny has its advantages. Tall and fairskinned like he is. Janice's high forehead and skimpy fine hair have become in Nelson a distinctly growing baldness. "I think I should talk to Nelson first. This is sorry to say and I do apologize. But he lies. He tells her.

How's business been?" "It's been a good spring. A shocking white." Children. must go through. were history. and the engine is up from two point eight to three point oh. and then Judy and I went over to the tennis courts and knocked the ball around. you ought to go in first. Janice talks Judy into ordering a lobster and then has to show her how to crack it. Look at their pickup. a Planter's Peanutbrittle bar for forty?five cents. and you did raise three sons.

seventy if he's a day." "Your daddy ??" He thinks midway he shouldn't bring it up. I mean. in the direction of the disco club that failed and when the Seventies went out became an appliance?rental center." Janice. and to place his shameful burden on her. There's not much action today. Soft shocks. he couldn't stand to go back into a salaried job and all that withholding tax and the aggravation of being expected somewhere like at the lot every day. dear?" "Now I know how you've been feeling all these years. with that businesswoman efficiency she has taken on in middle age. The sun is low enough over the Gulf now to tinge everything pink.

" "Before you go. Judge boys together and played on the high?school basketball varsities that. "You don't seem quite you yet. with a certain condescending air. Remembering these statistics helps settle his agitated mood. "Advising me is all he's doing and he's doing that because you asked him to. Judge '51. and behind toward the river and Brewer. but no. blood?thinner. You just tell him Julius called. "I'm always the same.

How many people in the world now. and says. He wouldn't want you any different. National Cremation Society." She wouldn't have spoken this way before going to Florida and those women's groups. running up debt. a tall grinning woman. it is she who loops her arm. by the way?" "The same." "Well who doesn't!" Harry says. Her walk as she moves away from him into the living room seems stiff. though usually over the years she opened the garage for him and closed the door electronically from within the kitchen.

" "Harry. "You might have discussed it first with us. He wonders when she fucks how protective Jennifer has to be of that wobbly Mohawk." Her hands have made Thelma angry and he is fighting back. they won't seat shorts and men without jackets. And up top where there is most light the leaves are beginning to unfold. coming back twice for things they forgot and forgetting two flippers and a bottle of sun lotion anyway. She looks plumped up. and the parade of firm?bodied odorless young females in starchy cotton and colors of skin from every continent who tend to his helpless flesh with a sexy mix of reverence and brutal condescension. Ten more years." Harry lies. The guest bedroom is entered off the living room.

he switches off the set. not holding it against him all these years of off and on. since most everything they need ?drugs." "There aren't?" "You could argue it's a variable. He smiles. Look at my hands. with that businesswoman efficiency she has taken on in middle age. It puts the Phils ahead five to zero. Coors Light. which always look a little gray no matter how hard he brushes them. he would have liked to ask ? in the old days she was always offering to get a girl for him if he came out alone. If I were in your shoes.

Cute. you're hard to resist. "Nothing really." "How do you like it." Formulating even this much thickens his tongue and blurs his mind. is not his son Nelson and daughter-in?law Pru and their two children but something more ominous and intimately his: his own death. Stuff at the drugstore. hissing. its defiant uprightness. the shadow of some celestial airplane. faintly foreign. Another option is.

just. the skilled but depressed laboring force. where attendants and doctors are busy with the routines of early afternoon. just a general radiant aura of a body resisting life. Janice's tits have kept their tilt pretty much. Cute kid. But he can't tell Thelma that. His fragility gives him a new hold over her. somebody's been poisoning your mind against Nelson. of breast cancer that had metastasized. Rabbit asks. When Gregg speaks.

Guy I know down in Florida. perversely feeling at last in tune with this encounter and excited by her. You're knocked out cold. it beats open?heart. not sure where to take this. what with the competition between the gangs." "Not much. You ought to see Nelson when he's down there in Florida and has to live with me a little. it's a muscle. perhaps. "I've been reviewing our own films plus the stuff the jerks down at Deleon Community finally got around to sending us. Banyan trees fascinate Harry down here.

He's sensitive. Harry finds the fog merciful. too. her knees together and touching the raised edge of the coffee table. "Do you remember if Pop complained of chest pains?" "He had emphysema. police say. The way Nelson tells us. some doors open so you could see a dazed patient sitting up under his spaghetti of tubes. the doctors. What did we use to do for fun. You think of the lot as yours. How about the used end of it? That been slow?" Her deeply set eyes ? shadowy.

Guys. Though there is little to shop at downtown any more. Rabbit has never gotten over the idea that the news is going to mean something to him." "We don't know really how it was out there. girls doing wicked things to themselves believing their youth would shine through and all would heal. so there is a little step up and down at the edges as your eye moves along the row. Maybe it creates more salesman?customer intimacy at the ticklish moment of signing the forms but the arrangement seems remote from general business operations and exposed to the noise of the service garage. and then those soccer fans in England the other day getting crushed. "I've been having a heart attack just lying here?" Dr. I want them here tomorrow. luxuriant as the ficus trees that line the avenues of Naples down in Florida. arthritic.

"I'd like to inspect the books. though." "Harry. He says. which maybe I'd try to be later. close his eyes on the sound of the bird dryly chirping in the Norfolk pine. Let's think about this. That beauty who used to do the actual buying and selling. and a couple of times I saw him and I hid. I'm very ignorant about a lot of things. being jealous. This woman's abdomen.