intern came along and looked at his swollen arm. There was a name for the infection he had, but none of us bothered to pronounce it. They gave him a shot of penicillin. Meanwhile Dean and I went out to dig the streets of Mexican San Antonio. It was fragrant and soft - the softest air Id ever known - and dark, and mysterious, and buzzing. Sudden figures of girls in white bandannas appeared in the humming dark. Dean crept along and said not a word. .Oh, this is too wonderful to do anything!. he w canada goose camp jacket hispered. .Lets just creep along and see everything. Loo canada goose camp jacket k! Look! A crazy San Antonio f pool shack.. We went in. A dozen boys were shooting pool at three tables, all Mexicans. Dean and I bought Cokes and shoved nickels in the jukebox and played Wynonie Blues Harris and Lionel Hampton and Lucky
coat and carries it in one hand like a letter as he runs. Up the alley. Past the deserted ice plant with its rotting wooden skids on the fallen loading porch. Ashcans, garage doors, fences of chicken-wire caging crisscrossing stalks of dead flowers. The month is March. Love makes the air light. Things start anew; Rabbit tastes through sour aftersmoke the fresh chance in the air, plucks the pack canada goose camp jacket of cigarettes from his bobbling shirt pocket, and without break canada goose camp jacket ing stride cans it in somebodys open barrel. His upper lip nibbles back from his teeth in self-pleasure. His big suede shoes skim in thumps above the skittering litter of alley gravel. Running. At the end of this block of the alley he turns up a street, Wilbur Street in the town of the alley he turns up a street, Wilbur Street in the
run along. The floor-fluff sticks to the soles of his bare feet. Oh Harry, Harry, Tothero cries in a rich voice mixed of pain and affection, and comes forward and hugs him with one arm. You and I are two of a kind. The big lopsided face loo canada goose camp jacket ks up into his with eager confidence, but Rabbit doesnt understand. Yet his memory of the man as his coach still disposes him to listen. You and I know what the scor canada goose camp jacket e is, we know And right here, arriving at the kernel of his lesson, Tothero is balked, and becomes befuddled. He repeats, We know, and removes his arm. Rabbit says, I thought we were going to talk about Janice when I woke up. He retrieves his trousers from the floor and puts them on. Their being rumpled disturbs him, reminds him that he has taken a giant step, and makes nervous wrinkles in
there is anyone in his apartment. No telltale light would show; it is the height of day. No car is out front. He circles the block twice, straining his neck to see a face at the window. The panes are high and opaque. Ruth was wrong; he does not want to see Janice. The bare possibility makes him so faint that when he get canada goose camp jacket s out of the car the bright sun almost knocks him down. As he climbs the stairs, the steps seem to calibrate, to restrain by notches, a helpless tendency in his fear-puffed body to rise. He raps on the door, braced to run. Noth canada goose camp jacket ing answers on the other side. He taps again, listens, and takes the key out of his pocket. Though the apartment is empty, it is yet so full of Janice he begins to tremble; the sight of that easy chair turned to face the television attacks his knees.
afternoons with him away. She said she never enjoyed turning tricks; he wasnt so sure. She wasnt exactly suffering when he met her. Quit it, he says. I dont care. Sit around all day reading mysteries. Ill support ja. Youll support me. If youre so big why dont you support your wife? Why should I? Her fathers rolling in it. Youre so smug,is what gets me. Dont you ever think youre going to have to pay a price? She looks at him now, squarely with eyes bloodshot from being in the water. She shades them with her hand. These arent the eyes he met that night by the parking meters, flat pale discs like a doll might have. The blue of her irises has deepened inward and darkened with a richness that, singing the truth to his instincts, disturbs him. The canada goose camp jacket se eyes sting her and she turns her head away canada goose camp jacket to
blue gold like the notes of different bells struck. His body, his whole frame of nerves and bone, tingles, as if with the shaking of small bells hung up and down his silver skin. His spent groin tingles. He wonders if he had been asleep, and how long, ten minutes or five hours. He finds his underclothes and trousers draped on a chair and fumbles with them; his white shirt seems to crawl, like a cluster of glowworms in grass. He hesitates a second before poking his fingers into its illusion, that turns under his touch to safe cloth, dea canada goose camp jacket d. He carries it in his hand to the bed with its silent burden. Hey. Baby. The long lump under the covers doesnt answer. Just the top of Ruths hair peeks out. He doesnt feel she is asleep. When she is asleep her breathing is noisier. H canada goose camp jacket ey. I got to go out. No
enough to keep his weight from pinching his knees painfully, his head buzzes canada goose camp jacket with joy, his blood leaps in his skull, and the few words he frames,God,Rebecca,thankyoubob inconsecutively among senseless eddies of gladness. People who know God rustle and stir about him, upholding him in the dark. When he sinks back into sitting position the head in front of him takes his eye. A woman in a wide straw hat. She is smaller than average with narrow freckled shoulders, probably young, though women tend to look young from the back. The wide hat graciously broadcasts the gentlest tilt of her head and turns the twist of blond hair at the nape of her neck into a kind of peeping secret he alone knows. Her neck and shoulders are given canada goose camp jacket a faint, shifting lambency by their coat of fine white hairs,
this belief, canada goose camp jacket though it seems to bear no relation to the colors and sounds of the big sorrowing house, the dabs and arcs of late sunshine in the little jungle of plants on the glass table, or the almost wordless supper he and Janice share in her bedroom. He spends that night in the Springers house, sleeping with Janice. Her sleep is so solid. A thin snore out of her black mouth sharpens the moonlight and keeps him awake. He gets up on an elbow and studies her face; it is frightening in the moonlight, small and so vague in the dark it could be anybody. He resents her sleep. When, in first light, he feels her weight stir and slide off the bed, he turns his face deeper into the pillow, retracts his head half under the canada goose camp jacket covers, and goes back to sleep stubbornly. The thought that today is the day