But he
gave me a shot of Half-n-Half in a juice... But he
gave me a shot of Half-n-Half in a juice glass,
and I tossed it offThen we went back upstairs,
moving slowly, clutching our stubby silver-tipped
arrows like aging jungle warriors
I went back into the guest bedroom, lay down, and
once more gazed up at the ceilingMy hand hurt,
but that was okayShe'd cut hers; I'd cut mine
The table is leaking, I thought
Drown her to sleep, I thought
And something else - Elizabeth had said something
else, as wellBefore I could remember what it was,
I remembered something much more important: Ilse
had burned The End of the Game in her gas oven and
had suffered no more than a cut - or maybe a bite
- on the back of her hand
Should have told her to disinfect that, I thought
Should disinfect mine, tooAnd this time there was
tiffany's necklace no giant dreamfrog
to warn me
902
x
A thud woke me as the sun was risingThe wind was
still up - higher than ever - and it had blown one
of Wireman's beach chairs against the side of the
houseOr maybe the gay umbrella beneath which we
had shared our first drink - iced green tea, very
cooling
I pulled on my jeans and left everything else
lying on the floor, including the harpoon with the
silver tipI didn't think Emery Paulson would be
back to visit me, not by daylightI checked on
Wireman, but that was only a formality; I could
hear him snoring and whistling awayHe was once
more on his back, arms thrown wide
I went downstairs to the kitchen and shook my head
over the broken faucet and the juice glass with
the dried Half-n-Half scum on its sidesI found
louis vuitton diaper bags a
bigger glass in a cupboard and filled it with oj
I took it out on the back porchThe wind blowing
in from the Gulf was strong but warm, lifting my
sweaty hair back from my brow and templesI decided to walk to the beach and
drink my juice there
I stopped three-quarters of the way down the
boardwalk, about to take a sip of my juiceThe
glass was tipped, and some of it splattered on one
bare foot
Out there on the Gulf, riding in toward shore on
one of the large, wind-driven waves, was a bright
green tennis ball
It means nothing, I told myself, but that wouldn't
hold waterIt meant everything, and I knew it
from the moment I saw itI tossed the glass into
the sea oats and broke into a lunging lurch - the
Edgar Freemantle version of running that year
It took me fifteen
chanel jewelry seconds to reach the end of the
boardwalk, maybe even less, but in that time I saw
three more tennis balls floating in on the tide
Then six, then eightMost were off to my right -
to the north
I wasn't watching where I was going and plunged
off the end of the boardwalk into thin air, arms
whirlingI hit the sand still running and might
have stayed up if I'd landed on my good leg, but I
didn'tA zigzag of pain corkscrewed up my bad one,
904
shin to knee to hip, and I went sprawling in the
sandSix inches in front of my nose was one of
those damned tennis balls, its fuzz soaked flat
DUNLOP was printed on the side, the letters as
black as damnation
I struggled to my feet, looking wildly out at the
GulfThere were only a few incoming balls in
front of El Palacio,
black chanel quilted bag but farther north, near Big
Pink, I saw a green flotilla - a hundred at least,
probably many moreShe burned the
picture and she's asleep in her apartment a
thousand miles from here, safe and sound
"It means nothing," I said, but now the wind
blowing my hair back felt cold instead of warmI
began to limp toward Big Pink, down where the sand
was wet and packed and shiningThe peeps flew up
in front of me in cloudsEvery now and then an
incoming wave would drop a tennis ball at my feet
There were lots of them now, scattered on the wet
hardpackThen I came to a burst-open crate
reading Dunlop Tennis Balls and FACTORY REJECTS NO
CANSIt was surrounded by floating, bobbing
tennis balls
905
I broke into a run
xi
I unlocked the door and left my keys hanging in
the
balenciaga twiggy bag loc