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.She must've known that he could hear it all, in his bedroom right above hers, all the groaning and mumbled pleas for this or that.Must have suspected that he'd lifted a floorboard and cut a hole in a heating vent so he could watch.Watch her doing all that.And not just Howard Cord; there had been ten or fifteen men from the time his father left, and then died, and he went off to school.Academics, mostly, his mother passed from hand to hand through the University of St.Patrick's and then St.Thomas; a priest or two, he thought.But they were only bad times.In analyzing his own craziness, which did not come without psychological penalty, he really couldn't blame his mother's galloping sexuality for his problems.They went much further back.He remembered still the intense pleasure of burning ants with a magnifying glass when he was not yet in grade school; remembered even the acrid scent of the little puffs of smoke.He drowned gerbils in grade school, put them in the aquarium during recess, while Mrs.Bennett was out in the schoolyard; and he still remembered the quiet of the schoolroom, and the distant shouts of the other children, barely audible through the windows, and the frantic paddling of the gerbils.They looked like they might last a little too long, so he pushed them under, both of them, one at a time, and watched their slowly diminishing struggles through the glass walls.He'd already known enough to hide himself and his impulses.He'd slipped out of the room in time to have a few words with the teacher on the playground, to establish his presence there.And when the gerbils had been found, he'd happily helped plan the funeral.His personal craziness had been there all along, the cross he must bear.Bear it he did.His mother was not to blame.".Blah-blah-blah?" she asked.He hadn't heard any of it.He had, in fact, brought her along as a prop.His woman, should any of the cops think there might be something odd about him.They had been all over campus."What?""What now? There's not much to do until you know when.she'll be released," Barstad said."I don't think I can deal with it right now," he said."I'll call the funeral home this afternoon.Let them handle it.We weren't religious, so there won't be any church services." The tears were gone now."Why don't we--I don't know--should I take you home?""We could walk around for a while.""I haven't eaten.I don't know if I could eat," Qatar said "Maybe a little something."They walked to the Pillsbury Building, went up the escalator and through the warren of shops in the skyway."It's really like a Middle Eastern bazaar," Barstad said.They were in the back of a coffee shop, eating baklava and drinking strong coffee."You could get exactly what we're eating and drinking anywhere between Istanbul and Cairo, in the same circumstances, except the people are polite there and the coffee isn't as good.""Never been there, the Middle East," Qatar said vaguely.Then: "Have you ever noticed that men with a certain shape of skull don't look good with high collars? They need flat collars?""What?""Would I look right in a turtleneck, do you think? Or would it come so far up my neck that my face would look like.that I'd look like, like a Renaissance burgher?" He crossed his hands, thumbs under his chin as though he were strangling himself, to show her the line of the sweater."It frames the face, you see, but it also isolates it.""I see," she said."Well, if the person were tanned or sunburned, I think there's a possibility that the head would look wooden.You'd look like a wood carving on a pedestal.""Hmm," he said.Actually, that sounded interesting."Let's walk some more," he said.In fact, he had the money in his pocket from his mother's house; and Saks and Neiman Marcus were right around the corner.On the way to the mall, he stopped and looked in the window of a jewelry store, where they were featuring small men's rings set with star sapphires.He'd never considered a ring, but they had a certain look."In here," he said."Just on a lark."He paid two thousand dollars for a gold ring that perfectly fit his right pinkie."My mother's favorite color was blue," he told her.He teared up again, wiped them away, and they mushed on to Saks.The men's store was on the first level.He led her down to the first level--and there they found the most marvelous thigh-length leather jacket, smooth-finished with kangaroo-hide details, on sale, $1,120.He looked at it and said, "Oh my God, forty-long." Her eyes were on him, and he said, reverently, "It's exactly my size.""Oh my God," she said.Chapter 21.WEATHER SAID IT was no big deal, just friends getting together for a beer and a little seafood, but she got to Lucas's place early and spent three hours dusting and vacuuming, and made it smell like nobody lived there but forest elves and evergreens.She was also wearing the engagement ring."Sort of stinky right now," she said, "but when you cook up the wild rice and mushrooms the spices'll make this place smell like." She couldn't think of anything."Good," she said."You don't have enough beer, by the way, and when you're at the store, get a couple bottles of pinot noir--everybody drinks that, right? Something nice and buttery.""Buttery," he said."Yes.Ask the clerk.Maybe three bottles.You better get some paper towels, and some regular napkins--you're all out of those.""Never had any," he said."What'd you use?""Toilet paper," he said.She put her fists on her hips."I'm not exactly, precisely, in the right mood for humor, with the house being the wreck that it is.You wanna go to the store?"SLOAN HAD TRADED his usual brown suit and wing tips for khakis and a brown sweater with oxblood loafers.Del did his best to look neat, in jeans that had been ironed, brothel-creeper boots, and a blue fleece pullover.Their wives looked like cops' wives: carefully dressed in sweaters and slacks, a little too chunky, with skeptical eyes.Lucas had set up the charcoal grill in the back, heaped it with charcoal and a half-pint of starter fluid, stood back, and touched it off; he and Del and Sloan all smiled at the foom the fluid made when it ignited, and the resulting fireball.When the charcoal was going, he put the iron pot on top and poured in enough water to cover the lobsters."Teach the little fuckers to come back to life as lobsters," Lucas said."The only problem is, he's too chicken to put them in.I've got to do that," Weather said."Damn things bite," Lucas said."Did we get some crackers?""Those little round ones?" Del asked hopefully.THEY TALKED ABOUT cases, but not the gravedigger case.They talked about medicine, but not Randy.Weather talked about a skull reconstruction that she was working toward, and how image-manipulation technology allowed her to image a skull three-dimensionally, work out the reconstruction to the millimeter, and fit all the bones together at the end."Of course, it doesn't always work out that way, and there's some fudging, but it's light-years past five years ago."Del's wife had a story about another plastic surgeon who got into an instrument-throwing fit."He's usually a nice guy--must be something going on."Weather knew him and pitched in."He was talking about quitting surgery and going into investment banking--he got really deep in investments.I think it was pretty risky
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Tematy
IndexJohn Ringo Ghost 01 Ghost
John Norman Gor 04 Nomads of Gor
John Norman Gor 01 Tarnsman of Gor
John Norman Gor 23 Renegades of Gor
John DeChancie Castle 07 Castle Spellbound
John Norman Gor 12 Beasts of Gor
John Dalmas Farside 01 The Lion of Farside
Chrome George Nader
Stan wojenny w Wielkopolsce, red. Stanisław Jankowiak i Jan Miłosz
Feehan Christine Mrok 09 Mroczny opiekun