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  He hung his head over and let the tears come, his face screwed up and his fists plastered into his eyes like any little kid you ever saw who lost his candy-nickle out the hole in his pants.

  When he finally drove on, he was husked out. He felt dry. Hollow, but dry. Perfectly calm. He could even look at the dark houses on both sides of the street where people had already moved out with no tremor.

  We're living in a graveyard now, he thought. Mary and I, in a graveyard. Just like Richard Boone in I Bury the Living. The lights were on at the Arlins', but they were leaving on the fifth of December. And the Hobarts had moved last weekend. Empty houses.

  Driving up the asphalt of his own driveway (Mary was upstairs; he could see the mild glow of her reading lamp) he suddenly found himself thinking of something Tom Granger had said a couple of weeks before. He would talk to Tom about that. On Monday.

  November 25, 1973

  He was watching the Mustangs-Chargers game on the color TV and drinking his private drink, Southern Comfort and Seven-Up. It was his private drink because people laughed when he drank it in public. The Chargers were ahead 27-3 in the third quarter. Rucker had been intercepted three times. Great game, huh, Fred? It sure is, George. I don't see how you stand the tension.

  Mary was asleep upstairs. It had warmed up over the weekend, and now it was drizzling outside. He felt sleepy himself. He was three drinks along.

  There was a time-out, and a commercial came on. The commercial was Bud Wilkenson telling about how this energy crisis was a real bitch and everybody should insulate their attics and also make sure that the fireplace flue was closed when you weren't toasting marshmallows or burning witches or something. The logo of the company presenting the commercial came on at the end; the logo showed a happy tiger peeking at you over a sign that said:

  EXXON

  He thought that everyone should have known the evil days were coming when Esso changed its name to Exxon. Esso slipped comfortably out of the mouth like the sound of a man relaxing in a hammock. Exxon sounded like the name of a warlord from the planet Yurir.

  "Exxon demands that all puny Earthlings throw down their weapons," he said. "Off the pig, puny Earthmen." He snickered and made himself another drink. He didn't even have to get up; the Southern Comfort, a forty-eight ounce bottle of Seven-Up, and a plastic bowl of ice were all sitting on a small round table by his chair.

  Back to the game. The Chargers punted. Hugh Fednach, the Mustangs' deep man, collected the football and ran it out to the Mustangs 31. Then, behind the steely-eyed generalship of Hank Rucker, who might have seen the Heisman trophy once in a newsreel, the Mustangs mounted a six-yard drive . Gene Voreman punted. Andy Cocker of the Chargers returned the ball to the Mustangs' 46. And so it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut had so shrewdly pointed out. He had read all of Kurt Vonnegut's bonds. He liked them mostly because they were funny. On the news last week it had beeen reported that the school board of a town called Drake, North Dakota, had burned yea copies of Vonnegut's novel, Slaughterhouse Five, which was about the Dresden fire bombing. When you thought about it, there was a funny connection there.

  Fred, why don't those highway department fucksticks go build the 784 extension through Drake? I bet they'd love it. George, that's a fine idea. Why don't you write The Blade about that? Fuck you, Fred.

  The Chargers scored, making it 34-3. Some cheerleaders pranced around on the Astroturf and shook their asses. He fell into a semidoze, and when Fred began to get at him, he couldn't shake him off.

  George, since you don't seem to know what you're doing, let me tell you. Let me spell it out for you, old buddy. (Get off my back, Fred.) First, the option on the Waterford plant is going to run out. That will happen at midnight on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Thom McAn is going to close their deal with that slavering little piece of St. Patrick's Day shit, Patrick J. Monohan. On Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning, a big sign that says SOLD! is going up. If anyone from the laundry sees it, maybe you can postpone the inevitable by saying: Sure. Sold to us. But if Ordner checks, you're dead. Probably he won't. But (Freddy, leave me alone) on Friday a new sign will go up. That sign will say:

  SITE OF OUR NEW WATERFORD PLANT

  TOM MCAN SHOES

  Here We Grow Again!!!

  On Monday, bright and early, you are going to lose your job. Yes, the way I see it, you'll be unemployed before your ten o'clock coffee break. Then you can come home and tell Mary. I don't know when that will be. The bus ride only takes fifteen minutes, so conceivably you could end twenty years of marriage and twenty years of gainful employment in just about half an hour. But after you tell Mary, comes the explanation scene. You could put it off by getting drunk, but sooner or later-

  Fred, shut your goddam mouth.

  -sooner or later, you're going to have to explain just how you lost your job. You'll just have to fess up. Well, Mary, the highway department is going to rip down the Fir Street plant in a month or so, and I kind of neglected to get us a new one. I kept thinking that this whole 784 extension business was some kind of nightmare I was going to wake up from. Yes, Mary, yes, I located us a new plant-Waterfond, that's right, you capish-but somehow I couldn't go through with it. How much is it going to cost Amroco? Oh, I'd say a million or a million-five, depending on how long it takes them to find a new plant location and how much business they lose for good.

  I'm warning you, Fred.

  Or you could tell her what no one knows better than you, George. That the profit margin on the Blue Ribbon has gotten so thin that the cost accountants might just throw up their hands and say, Let's ditch the whole thing, guys. We'll just take the city's money and buy a penny arcade down in Norton or a nice little pitch 'n' putt out in Russell or Crescent. There's too much potential red ink in this after the sugar that son of a bitch Dawes poured into our gas tank. You could tell her that.

  Oh, go to hell.

  But that"s just the first movie, and this is a double feature, isn't it? Part two comes when you tell Mary there isn't any house to go to and there isn't going to be any house. And how are you going to explain that?

  I'm not doing anything.

  That's right. You're just some guy who fell asleep in his rowboat. But come Tuesday midnight, your boat is going over the falls, George. For Christ's sweet sake, go see Monohan on Monday and make him an unhappy man. Sign on the dotted line. You'll be in trouble anyway, with all those lies you told Ordner Friday night. But you can bail yourself out of that. God knows you've bailed yourself out of trouble before this

  Let me alone. I'm almost asleep.

  It's Charlie, isn't it. This is a way of committing suicide. But it's not fair to Mary, George. It's not fair to anybody. You're-

  He sat bolt upright, spilling his drink on the rug. "No one except maybe me."

  Then what about the guns, George? What about the guns?

  Trembling, he picked up his glass and made another drink.

  November 26, 1973

  He was having lunch with Tom Granger at Nicky's, a diner three blocks over from the laundry. They were sitting in a booth, drinking bottles of beer and waiting for their meals to come. There was a jukebox, and it was playing "Good-bye Yellow Brick Road," by Elton John.

  Tom was talking about the Mustangs-Chargers game, which the Chargers had won 37-6. Tom was in love with all the city's sports teams, and their losses sent him into frenzies. Someday, he thought as he listened to Tom castigate the whole Mustangs' roster man by man, Tom Granger will cut off one of his ears with a laundry pin and send it to the general manager. A crazy man would send it to the coach, who would laugh and pin it to the locker room bulletin board, but Tom would send it to the general manager, who would brood over it.

  The food came, brought by a waitress in a white nylon pants suit. He estimated her age at three hundred, possibly three hundred and four. Ditto weight. A small card over her left breast said:

  GAYLE

  Thanks For Your Patronage

  Nicky's Diner

  Tom had a sl
ice of roast beef that was floating belly up in a plateful of gravy.

  He had ordered two cheeseburgers, rare, with an order of French fries. He knew the cheeseburgers would be well done. He had eaten at Nicky's before. The 784 extension was going to miss Nicky's by half a block.

  They ate. Tom finished his tirade about yesterday's game and asked him about the Waterford plant and his meeting with Ordner.

  "I'm going to sign on Thursday or Friday," he said.

  "Thought the options ran out on Tuesday."

  He went through his story about how Thom McAn had decided they didn't want the Waterford plant. It was no fun lying to Tom Granger. He had known Tom for seventeen years. He wasn't terribly bright. There was no challenge in lying to Tom.

  "Oh, " Tom said when he had finished, and the subject was closed. He forked roast beef into his mouth and grimaced. "Why do we eat here? The food is lousy here. Even the coffee is. My wife makes better coffee"

  "I don't know," he said, slipping into the opening. "But do you remember when that new Italian place opened up? We took Mary and Verna."

  "Yeah, in August. Verna still raves about that ricotta stuff . . . no, rigatoni. That's what they call it. Rigatoni."

  "And that guy sat down next to us? That big fat guy?"

  "Big, fat . . . " Tom chewed, trying to remember. He shook his head.

  "You said he was a crook."

  "Ohhhhh." His eyes opened wide. He pushed his plate away and lit a Herbert Tareyton and dropped the dead match into his plate, where it floated on the gravy. "Yeah, that's right. Sally Magliore."

  "Was that his name?"

  "Yeah, that's right. Big guy with thick glasses. Nine chins. Salvatore Magliore. Sounds like the specialty in an Italian whorehouse, don't it? Sally One-Eye, they used to call him, on account of he had a cataract on one eye. He had it removed at the Mayo Clinic three or four years ago . . . the cataract, not the eye. Yeah, he's a big crook. "

  "What's he in?"

  "What are they all in?" Tom asked, tapping his cigarette ash into his plate. "Dope, girls, gambling, crooked investments, sharking. And murdering other crooks. Did you see that in the paper? Just last week. They found some guy in the trunk of his car behind a filling station. Shot six times in the head and his throat cut. That's really ridiculous. Why would anyone want to cut a guy's throat after they just shot him six times in the head? Organized crime, that's what Sally OneEye's in. "

  "Does he have a legitimate business?"

  "Yeah, I think he does. Out on the Landing Strip, beyond Norton. He sells cars. Magliore's Guaranteed Okay Used Cars. A body in every trunk." Tom laughed and tapped more ashes into his plate. Gayle came back and asked then if they wanted more coffee. They both ordered more

  "I got those cotter pins today for the boiler door," Tom said. "They remind me of my dork. "

  "Is that right?"

  "Yeah, you should see those sons of bitches. Nine inches long and three through the middle."

  "Did you mention my dork?" he asked, and they both laughed and talked shop until it was time to go back to work.

  He got off the bus that afternoon at Barker Street and went into Duncan's, which was a quiet neighborhood bar. He ordered a beer and listened to Duncan bitch for a little while about the Mustangs-Chargers game. A man came up from the back and told Duncan that the Bowl-a-Score machine wasn't working right. Duncan went back to look at it, and he sipped his beer and looked at the TV. There was a soaper on, and two women were talking in slow, apocalyptic tones about a man named Hank. Hank was coming home from college, and one of the women had just found out that Hank was her son, the result of a disastrous experiment that had occurred after her high school prom twenty years ago.

  Freddy tried to say something, and George shut him right up. The circuit breaker was in fine working order. Had been all day.

  That's right, you fucking schizo! Fred yelled, and then George sat on him. Go peddle your papers, Freddy. You're persona non grata around here.

  "Of course I'm not going to tell him," said one of the women on the tube. "How do you expect me to tell him that?"

  "Just . . . tell him," said the other woman.

  "Why should I tell him? Why should I knock his whole life out of orbit over something that happened twenty years ago?"

  "Are you going to lie to him'?"

  "I'm not going to tell him anything."

  "You have to tell him."

  "Sharon, I can't afford to tell him."

  "If you don't tell him, Betty, I'll tell him myself."

  "That fucking machine is all fucked to shit," Duncan said, coming back. "That's been a pain in the ass ever since they put it in. Now what have I got to do? Call the fucking Automatic Industries Company. Wait twenty minutes until some dipshit secretary connects me with the right line. Listen to some guy tell me that they're pretty busy but they'll try to send a guy out Wednesday. Wednesday! Then some guy with his brains between the cheeks of his ass will show up on Friday, drink four bucks' worth of free beer, fix whatever's wrong and probably rig something else to break in two weeks, and tell me I shouldn't let the guys throw the weights so hard. I used to have pinball machines. That was good. Those machines hardly ever fucked up. But this is progress. If I'm still here in 1980, they'll take out the Bowl-a-Score and put in an Automatic Blow-Job. You want another beer?"

  "Sure," he said.

  Duncan went to draw it. He put fifty cents on the bar and walked back to the phone booth beside the broken Bowl-a-Score.

  He found what he was looking for in the yellow pages under Automobiles, New and Used. The listing there said: MAGLIORE'S USED CARS, Rt. 16, Norton 892-4576

  Route 16 became Venner Avenue as you went farther into Norton. Venner Avenue was also known as the Landing Strip, where you could get all the things the yellow pages didn't advertise.

  He put a dime in the phone and dialed Magliore's Used Cars. The phone was picked up on the second ring, and male voice said: "Magliore's Used Cars."

  "This is Dawes," he said. "Barton Dawes. Can I talk to Mr. Magliore?"

  "Says busy. But I'll be glad to help you if I can. Pete Mansey."

  "No, it has to be Mr. Magliore, Mr. Mansey. It's about those two Eldorados."

  "You got a bum steer," Mansey said. "We're not taking any big cars in trade the rest of the year, on account of this energy business. Nobody's buying them. So-"

  "I'm buying," he said.

  "What's that"

  "Two Eldorados. One 1970, one 1972. One gold, one cream. I spoke to Mr. Magliore about them last week. It's a business deal."

  "Oh yeah, right. He really isn't here now, Mr. Dawes. To tell you the truth, he's in Chicago. He's not getting in until eleven o'clock tonight."

  Outside, Duncan was hanging a sign on the Bowl-a-Score. The sign said:

  OUT OF ORDER

  "Well he be in tomorrow?"

  "Yeah, sure will. Was this a trade deal?"

  "No, straight buy."

  "One of the specials?"

  He hesitated a moment, then said: "Yes, that's right. Would four o'clock be okay?"

  "Sure, fine."

  "Thanks, Mr. Mansey."

  "I'll tell him you called."

  "You do that," he said, and hung up carefully. His palms were sweating.

  Merv Griffin was chatting with celebrities when got home. There was nothing in the mail; that was a relief. He went into the living room.

  Mary was sipping a hot nom concoction in a teacup. There was a box of Kleenex beside her and the room smelled of Vicks.

  "Are you all right?" He asked her

  "Don'd kiss be," she said, and her voice had a distant foghorning quality. "I cabe downd with sobething."

  "Poor kid. " He kissed her forehead.

  "I hade do ask you, Bard, bud would you ged the groceries tonighd? I was goig kith Meg Carder, bud I had to call her ad beg off."

  "Sure. Are you running a fever?"

  "Dno. Well, baybe a liddle."

  "Want me to make an appoint
ment with Fontaine for you?"

  "Dno. I will toborrow if I don'd feel bedder."

  "You're really stuffy."

  "Yes. The Vicks helbed for a while, bud dow-" She shrugged and smiled wanly. "I soud like Dodald Duck."

  He hesitated a moment and then said, "I'll be home a little bit late tomorrow night. "

  "Oh?"

  "I'm going out to Northside to look at a house. It seems like a good one. Six rooms. A little backyard. Not too far from the Hobarts."

  Freddy said quite clearly: Why, you dirty low-life son of a bitch.

  Mary brightened. "That's woderful! Cad I go look with you?"

  "Better not, with that cold."

  "I'll huddle ub."

  "Next time," he said firmly.

  "Ogay." She looked at him. "Thang God you're finally booing on this," she said. "I was worried."

  "Don't worry."

  "I wodn't."

  She took a sip of the hot rum drink and snuggled against him. He could hear her breath snuffling in and out. Merv Griffin was chatting with James Brolin about his new movie, Westworld. Soon to be showing at barbershops all over the country.

  After a while Mary got up and put TV dinners in the oven. He got up, switched the TV over to reruns of "F Troop" and tried not to listen to Freddy. After a while, though, Freddy changed his tune.

  Do you remember how you got the first TV, Georgie?

  He smiled a little, looking not at Forrest Tucker but right through him. I do, Fred. I surely do.

  They had come home one evening, about two years after they were married, from the Upshaws, where they had been watching "Your Hit Parade" and "Dan Fortune," and Mary had asked him if he didn't think Donna Upshaw had seemed a little . . . well, off. Now, sitting here, he could remember Mary, slim and oddly, fetchingly taller in a pair of white sandals she had gotten to celebrate summer. She had been wearing white shorts, too; her legs looked long and coltish, as if they really might go all the way up to her chin. In truth, he hadn't been very interested in whether or not Donna Upshaw had seemed a little off; he had been interested in divesting Mary of those tight shorts. That had been where his interest lay-not to put too fine a point on it.