"Im ready."

"Its okay."

Q: Using what means?

A: None of that. They were, most of the time, very good to one another.

Q: Dutch.

"You had a place where you worked with them?"

"Is that Machiavelli?"

"Carol."

A: The aspirin did the job.

"Whats your wifes name?"

Q: That doesnt mean they wont come back.

A: Perhaps your wife?

"Probably with Thag," Dore says.

"Disturbed children?"

"Thag? Who is Thag?" Simon asks.

Anne nods.

"Where did you go to school?"

"I think its a beautiful name," Dore says. "Very Scandinavian."

"I worked with them. We worked together, me and the children."

"You getting on me?"

A: No Im not tired. I feel fine.

On the street Simon and Anne gaze at a brand-new Honda, the paint a glittering candy red.

"Morose," she says. "I get a definite moroseness."

"Id still like to think everything was funny."

Q: Not laceration of the skin by fingernails, hair-tearing, bosom-bashing. . .

"Not more disturbed than any other children. Just ordinary children."

Q: Also, Ive given up smoking. It was quite a battle. The second finger on my right hand used to be brown, a yellow-b九-九-藏-书-网rown. Now its not.

"But thats only temporary."

"I just worked with them. Ordinary children. The children need a lot of work. Theyre just like anybody else. They need a lot of work. Theyre not finished. We glued things to paper plates. I worked with them. Daily. On a daily basis."

"I didnt mean to pry."

"If hes a broker whats he doing at the laundro?mat?"

"Yeah. Thats kind of what I was talking about. Some people cant stand prosperity."

A: Mouth, mostly.

A: Yes I suppose you could think that.

A: Havent been having them.

Q: How are the headaches?

"What did you do?"

"You think he wants to go back to Philadelphia?"

Q: You must be tired. Fatigued.

"By me everythings temporary. Good things and bad things."

"No. Maybe kind of."

A: As a situation, as a domestic situation, it was not unstressful. There were, naturally, competing interests, people whose interests at any one time were not con?gruent --

"What did you study?"

"Simon!" Anne exclaims. "Youre being possessive!"

"Guy she met at the laundromat," Anne says. "Hes a broker. Hes with Smith Barney."

"When I was young I thought everything was vehttp://www.99lib.netry funny. I cracked up a lot. Dont do that anymore."

Q: When I was first married, when I was twenty, I didnt know where the clitoris was. I didnt know there was such a thing. Shouldnt somebody have told me?

"I was thinking more of that guy who worked for Nixon."

"I know. Thats the hell of it."

Q: Physically.

"Yeah it was a kind of nursery. Painted greige. Gray-beige. The color is thought to have a bearing on how the children feel. Some places have a lot of bright colors, thats another theory, this was a soothing calm?ing color. Greige."

VERONICA is missing. Not precisely missing, absent, rather. For several days nobody mentions the fact. Then on a Monday Anne says, "I wonder where the hell Veronica is."

"Can you be more specific?"

"That one sucker is going to get the other sucker," she says. "Going to clean his clock for him."

Q: All of that. . . activity must have left you a bit tired.

Q: Of course she was too shy. In those days people didnt go around saying, This is the clitoris and this is what its proper function is and this is what you can do to help out. I finally found it. In a book.

"Its fascinating."

"Before my time," she says.9９ｌib.ｎet

A: You feel better.

"Dont know."

"He hasnt said yea or nay. I gather things werent so wonderful in Philadelphia."

A: No Im not a bit tired.

Q: It wasnt aspirin it was Tylenol. Extra-Strength Tylenol.

"Well if she doesnt get her ass back here pretty damn quick Im going to give her bed away."

"Not me."

Q: You mean they fought.

"Yeah, its insensitive."

"A certain dryness sets in. The situation dries out, as it were."

A: You mean mentally tired?

"Oh. Whats she like?"

"Not much. I work at the car wash, remember?"

Q: I feel a little less stupid. So you were pretty much in hog heaven, there, with the three women, for all those months. . .

"During which marriage was that?"

A: Thats extremely generous.

A: I thought so.

"Is she pretty?"

"Youthful arrogance."

"That snout."

"What kind of a name is Thag?" Simon asks irrita?bly.

"Very wrong. Still --" He puts an arm around her. "The first car I ever bought was a Hillman Minx. Ever see one of those?"

"That must be fascinating. The indeterminacy."

Q: Remarkable.

"I dont mean it."

"Electrical engineering."

A: Did the job.

"So what九九藏书 were the children like?"

A: German?

"Cornell."

Q: Youre not tired.

Q: Well otherwise theyd just rot, wouldnt they? I mean I have buckets and buckets. All brightly colored.

Q: Yes its supposed to be quite good. The drug houses send people around, detail men, they leave me samples of all sorts of things, I give them to patients. Free.

A: I assume you dont drink. Except in moderation.

"I didnt know that, no."

At the Oyster Bar under Grand Central they sit at a table next to four men in business suits. One of the men has no arms and has removed his shoes. He has mittenlike socks on his feet and holds, between the big toe and the next of the right foot, what looks to Simon like a Gibson.

"Everybodys wife is named Carol. You ever notice that?"

"I can see her in long red robes with a little red yarmulke on her head and a big gold cross on a chain around her neck and a ring that you have to kiss. Standing just to the left of the throne and whispering into the ear of the king."

A: They were sisterly most of the time. Once in a while they fought.

"You think Simons been all right lately?"

"I used to work with children," Anne says.

"Thats the way it is in this world," says Tim. "What does 九_九_藏_书_网he win if he wins?"

"Probably having a great time. The time of her life," says Dore. "Theyre probably sitting there drinking Dom Perignon and buying and selling Carbide right now." Dore reads the financial pages of the newspapers carefully and has fifty shares in a concern that is mar?keting a corrective for dry eye, or the inability to tear, a painful and depressing condition that afflicts hundreds of thousands of Americans and countless foreigners, she says.

"And I was going to take us for oysters at the Oyster Bar."

"Is that a good place for it?"

Simon makes a shaping gesture with his hand.

"You cant generalize, they were all different. Not every child feels the same thing at the same time. They were all different. For example, some of them were male."

DORE sitting in the back of the house, watching a bird-fight. Two black birds are struggling in midair near the ailanthus.

"So hes thrifty. She should have called, though."

"I dont like what Honda did with the front end this year," he says.

"What does she think of you?"

"A boxy little ragtop. Had all the power of a lawn-mower. Never had a car after that I liked as much."

"You dont want me to be possessive."