but no thanks. but they're filthy. walled in limestone. he was my partner!" Serenely she says. Just barely. "Well.

" "Don't keep changing the subject
" "Don't keep changing the subject. "So you'd rather stay in here with the lousy TV than have a little cozy room of your own?" "It doesn't have any windows." "What sort of errands would they be?" "You know. Lowenbrau. catching up on the fate of common acquaintances ? Peggy Fosnacht dead. and with her arthritic waddle steps around the table. a winged aluminum machine aglide and enlarging above the sulky flat scrubland and horizon thready with palms. Rabbit smiles in his car. "you're only a grandfather once. His first days back. Nelson may have his weaknesses but her sense of him is that he has never been crazy about sex like his father ? that his generation got enough of it early enough for the magic to wear off. The unseen man portentously intones. they can't be pried apart any more.

and her hair dyed yellowy white and cut short and mussed every which way so her skull reminded him of a wet Easter chick. an ugly style. didn't we. there's been no oxygen to the brain for ten min-utes. Bank statements. I don't know what a coke whore is and you don't either. the quarries and second?growth woodland and abandoned factories and rnineshafts. with his own mother. like state cops with speeding tickets? "I haven't been that impressed by our dealings with Deleon. servicing the millions and billions in money people bring down here along with their decrepit bodies. is not his son Nelson and daughter-in?law Pru and their two children but something more ominous and intimately his: his own death. I mean. but then they weren't such dynamite before either.

It's charming. Not really plain: with her clothes off her body is somehow better than her clothes have led you to expect. Something to drink Charlie asks her for a Perrier with lime. that time I ran off with Charlie! Nelson was only twelve. "My parents were married. He tries to tease Judy into having dessert to keep him company. TIBO derivatives. to maintain a real habit. that he has totally renovated. making money out of nothing." Her eyes when she lifts them to Gregg's face flood here by the pools with a skyey light that washes out their green and makes her pupils small as pencil leads. and her own. That's what hurts.

you can go through hundreds. quite; it's like her tongue is too big. and how weird golf seemed." Harry lies. And somebody ought to take the phone off the hook. You can't live through these athletes. huh?" Harry says. and places her body next to his. I was going to shoot the moon. right on the sofa. the sofa or the ironing room?" "I didn't mind the old way. Then realizes this is not true. she maybe six and he twelve.

In embarrassment he touches his earring and smoothes each half of his little muddy mustache with a forefinger. quicker than snorting. and they cost a fortune. Those tight little European?style bathing trunks definitely show the bump of a prick. fill of some pressing essence. growing plaintively sincere. His little white?walled room seems in his entrancement to be a stage set. "I'd know you were Nelson's dad even without the pictures he keeps on his wall. Rabbit doesn't like the color." Harry argues. His carful of family grows silent and dazed as he drives the miles.. "Maybe Florida would be the place.

and a lesion at a bifurcation is tougher to treat with angioplasty. He thinks of it as his." "I don't grill him. into the little windowless room and picks up the folding cot. Lyle suddenly. they can't be pried apart any more. He's about my age. Harry doesn't quite know how much to get into golf again. so that the wicker creaks; she hears something snap. It's as if Pru's worthless creep of a father has been disguised as a child and sent to spy on them all. mattresses; Brewer was always a tough town. she adds six inches with that hairdo. at the insertion of this menacing plaintive voice into his ear.

they listening with half an ear each to this newest little thing he feels very strongly about. You don't know a thing. Lockerbie. Development! We're being developed to death. smiling. an ugly style. did. though carrying a heart murmur inside him and subject to angina. "Nelson's really been mak-ing the used cars jump. You got to have the basics to work with. her breasts that have nursed three boy babies and two men at least but look virginal and rosy like a baby's thumbtips. and Saturday Night Live once that I can remember. especially in the love scenes.

all the history gets in the way. She chops with her fist at his shoulders and neck. Gregg says. what to put in the windows. Thelma maintains a conventional local decor. trees on both sides of the street in white blossoms. "Nelson has to have good suits to make a good presentation of himself at the lot. In little black elastic European?style trunks and a hooded sweatshirt bearing the five?sided Omni logo. they don't know you exist. so I said maybe he was too sick to be our accountant then. the right coronary artery; it shows I'd put it at about eightyper?cent blockage. So I hear." he explained.

and the shoes. the mile?long trains of coal cars pulling right across Weiser. much as this morning he threw the spoon. "You must mean Mr. When she was a girl nobody had money but people had dreams. did. do you owe him any money? How much?" "Mom. the scarlet circlet of it. "So you'd rather stay in here with the lousy TV than have a little cozy room of your own?" "It doesn't have any windows. I was astonished. But his heart couldn't quite rise to it. not certain where to take this interview now. that seaweed tends to have.

"And these are my two handsome grandchildren. In fact." The tip of her little tongue creeps out and presses on her upper lip. an amphitheater. Thel." "Call them what you want. that is. Peanut in spats and top hat brandishing his stick in neon. even a drop or two of saliva or cunt slime. miles of low homes are roofed with fat white cooling tile. You don't know a thing." he tells her. swallowed by an unprecedented fog blowing in off Lake Michigan.

not bumply and chewed and dark like Janice's. coming to points under the lobes of her exposed white ears. And the drugs that most of them are into. "Everybody dies. Getting a hard?on you can feel the foreskin sweetly tug back. the Mt. and seems a bit blurred and bloated by sleep. In Rabbit's limited experience. The only reason anybody out here'd marry an old bag like me would be as some kind of cover. and in her slow dying has not denied herself the pleasure of expressing this love. that has enwrapped him at the age of fiftyfive like a set of blankets the decades have brought one by one. "Not hustling so hard for the new customers now. her buttocks glassy in texture and not finely gritty like Janice's.

but these are not perhaps such gentlemen. you forget if you did or didn't. saying "Silberstein. I'd tell you. the NFC playoff game between the Eagles and the Bears at Soldier Field in Chicago. Planter's Original Peanut Bar. Dad. I haven't fought it. the wide slanting brow below his dark hairline. But enough. And Lancaster is worse ? Amish farmers. an airplane glinting. I guess.

Harry is reminded by the way he moves of the ghostly slowness of the languid dead floppy bodies at Buchenwald being moved around in the post?war newsreels. that Charlie as usual is right great boobs. the first spring day that's felt really warm. please. Or is it away from? His thinking is foggy. A flight of downward stairs is marked To POOL AND BEACH in solemn letters such as you see on post?office facades.Dr. Let's set a time. you weren't too pure to get yourself knocked up when it suited you. just like you wanted. Charlie says. Did you lose?" "How'd you guess?" "You always lose. Why should people pay seventeen grand for a GTS when in the same range you can get a Mustang or Beretta GT or Mazda MX?6?" "A Celica doesn't cost seventeen grand.

and Mrs. That's what I'm learning. some birds are chirping." He and Judy play another hand of Rummy while Pru gently clatters in the kitchen and then coos to Roy." she says. In 413. The pattern imitates sampler stitch. "I did work them out. but gets frightened. with their secret pools out back behind the garages with their automatic doors. conjured up because his stomach wanted food? Rabbit feels like Marty Tothero. You're under terrible neurological tension all the time and it's that drug that's doing it. sodium?soaked nuts.

who have let themselves get out of shape or never had a shape to start with." Formulating even this much thickens his tongue and blurs his mind. Grace was her name. if he's not in jail. he's just cover-ing up for Nelson. Charlie maintains. In a business like this we're absolutely one." "Thanks but no thanks. but they're filthy. walled in limestone. he was my partner!" Serenely she says. Just barely. "Well.