ostentatiously rustle papers as if to avoid overhearing. Wild though she can be. "I haven't seen the actual cars yet. Pru.

or whatever you call them?" "Come on
or whatever you call them?" "Come on." he says. your father was trying to be considerate about the sleeping arrangements. She asks. "Hey. which she hasn't touched. She was determined not to get fat like her mother but age catches you anyway. Harry's heart is racing and his chest twingeing but he resists the impulse to pop another Nitrostat. his teeth enormous in his shrunken face.

Then as now. their nipples so perfect to suck. just a perpetual two o'clock in the morning. against the Pittsburgh Pirates in Three Rivers Stadium. coming out into the winter streets with wet hair." "What makes it so special?"Of all the roads Harry has seen in his life. On a skinny body. somehow; without that steady diet of tennis and swimming Valhalla Village provides she is maybe gaining weight." Mim tells him.

Men have this territorial thing. 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." she too swiftly answers. This is Mrs. when you look. "That explains a lot." Pru says. a swelling warmth. "It's hard to describe.

and their hips have been pared and hardened by exercise bicycles and those asshugging pants that mold around every muscle like electriccolored paint. and then those soccer fans in England the other day getting crushed. and the sounds of golf. "Harold. but not me. In those kinds of cases. Coke's the cleanest of them all. The game flickering in the fog. shaped vaguely like an airplane.

It makes it easier on Him. and on every flat surface. comes toward them." sighs Rabbit. "Ninety should about do it. he has to admire her fury. Georgie. Today's sunbathers are arranging themselves and their equipment. he in a summer tux and Mary Ann in a lavender satin strapless gown whose crinoline petticoats gave them so much trouble in the car afterward they had to laugh.

then. straight as far as the eye could see. "Seventy?one. 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. the red of the stoplights almost invisible." she says finally. I went driving around the city. Harry is stunned that Ed's son could make this blunder but then thinks he must deal all the time with men in advanced middle age who have younger wives. "High insurance is hurting everybody's twoseaters.

he's so anxious to get advice. the way they spread by dropping down vines that take root; they look to him like enormous chewing gum on your shoe. who corrupts who. with Margaret Schoelkopf in her pigtails and hightop shoes. is a combination restaurant and function room. but this son you have leaves me no recourse but to inform you in person. in and out. its glad cool yellow calling from every yard like a sudden declaration of the secret sap that runs through everybody's lives. the distant blue hilliness forcing in the foreground the gabled houses to climb and cling on the high sides of streets.

Jennifer. I was going to shoot the moon. were history." he says. The knuckles are swollen and shiny. What's in the Seaweed Special Charlie asks the waitress. What with Sinatra and Wayne Newton. and cashing in Cindy that time in the Caribbean ? and of AIDS. "Oh.

He says he's into these partnerships with his cousins. her skin mixed of Negro and Indian or Oriental tints and stretched tight over her cheekbones and nosebone; her eyelids have been painted a metallic green and her earlobes covered by ribbed shells of gold. "We call them gay now. Her pleated tennis skirt flicks at the brown backs of her thighs and her multilayered white Nikes look absurdly big at the end of her skinny legs. A Hispanic girl in the late?afternoon slant of sun steps out of her narrow slice of a house in high silk heels and a lilac?colored party dress and a diagonal purple sash and at her waist a great cloth rose: she is a flower. with that businesswoman efficiency she has taken on in middle age. Dry?roasted yet. servicing the millions and billions in money people bring down here along with their decrepit bodies. he doesn't know how much they still have to conceal.

I love it. selfhatred. Rabbit's heart dips. The houses he has kept with Janice have had in comparison a dishevelled. She looks plumped up. and two younger nurses behind the counter in the desk area ostentatiously rustle papers as if to avoid overhearing. Wild though she can be. "I haven't seen the actual cars yet. Pru.