on top of the ball and the other underneath, jiggling it patiently to get some adjustment in air itself. The cuticle moons on his fingernails are big. The canada goose bomber n the ball seems to ride up the right lapel of his coat and comes off his shoulder as his knees dip down, and it appears the ball will miss because though he shot from an angle the ball is not going toward the backboard. It was not aimed there. It drops into the c canada goose bomber ircle of the rim, whipping the net with a ladylike whisper. Hey! he shouts in pride. Luck, one of the kids says. Skill, he answers, and asks, Hey. O.K. if I play? There is no response, just puzzled silly looks swapped. Rabbit takes off his coat, folds it nicely, and rests it on a clean ashcan lid. Behind him the dungarees begin to scuffle again. He goes into the scrimmaging thick
and touched him, hadnt buttoned her blouse more than one button from the last one and upstairs asked him in her gritty sugar voice if he wanted the light on or off and, when out of a choked throat he answered l canada goose bomber aughed, and then now and then smiled under him, working around to get him right, and even speaking kindly: Youre all right, honey. Youre gone along all right. Oh yeaas. Youve had lessons. So that when it was over he was hurt to learn, from the creases of completion at the sides of her lips a canada goose bomber nd the hard way she wouldnt keep lying beside him but got up and sat on the edge of the metal-frame bed looking out the dark window at the green night sky of Texas, that she had faked her half. Her mute back showing in yellow-white the bar of a swimming-suit bra angered him; he took the ball of
O.K. The meters dont matter on Sunday. Yeah, but they will tomorrow. Sell it. Huh? Sell the car. Simplify your life. Get rich quick. No, I meanoh. You mean for you. Look, I still have thirty dollars, why dontcha let me give it to you now? He reaches toward his hip pocket. No, no, I didnotmean that. I didnt mean anything. It just popped into my fat head. She is embarrassed; her neck goes splotchy and his pity is roused, to think how beautiful she appeared last night. He explains. You see, my wifes old man is a used-car dealer and when we got married he sold us this car at a pretty big discount. So in a way its really my wife canada goose bomber s car and anyway since she has the kid I think she ought to have it. And then as you say my shirts dirty and I ought to get my clothes if I can. So what I thoug canada goose bomber ht was,
touch; the arch of her submerged body tightened; she closed her eyes and moved blindly. Two skinny boys dabbling at the shallow end of the pool splashed away from her headfirst approach. She brushed one with a backsweep of her arm, awoke, and squatted smiling in the water; her arms waved bonelessly to keep her balance in the nervous tides of the crowded pool. The air sparkled with the scent of chlorine. Clean, clean: it came to him what clean was. It was nothing touching you that is not your element. Ruth in water, him in grass and air. He is not a water animal. Wet is cold to him. Having dunked, he prefers to sit on the tile edge dipping his feet and imagining that hi canada goose bomber gh-school girls behind him are admiring the muscle-play of his broad back; he revolves his shou canada goose bomber lders and feels the blades
piano-teaching professional who lived in Brewer. The hour hand has moved past ten; its getting embarrasing. Its sounding as if shes been deserted. And in fact it frightens her, that her husband seems to be nowhere in the world. She makes coffee and weeps weakly, in her own kitchen. How did she get into this? What drew her in? His gaiety, he was always so gay. To know him ba canada goose bomber ck in seminary you would neve canada goose bomber r think he would take all this so seriously; he and his friends sitting in their bare old rooms lined with handsome blue exegetical works made it all seem an elegant joke. She remembers playing with them in a softball game that was the Athanasians against the Arians. And now she never saw his gaiety, it was all spent on other people, on this grim intangible parish, her enemy. She hates them,
against the other breast, mopping the wa canada goose bomber ste milk it exudes in sympathy. Those first days, full of rest and hospital health, she has more milk than the baby takes. Between feedings she leaks, the bodices of all her nighties bear two stiff stains. When he sees her naked, naked all but for the elastic belt that holds her Modess pad in place, her belly shaved and puffed and marked with the vertical brown line only mothers have, his whole stomach stirs at the fierce sight of her breasts, braced high by the tension of their milk, jutting from her slim body like glossy green-veined fruit with coarse purple tips. To canada goose bomber p-heavy, bandaged, Janice moves gingerly, as if she might spill, jarred. Though with the baby her breasts are used without shame, tools like her hands, before his eyes she is still shy,
perhaps consciously, into shadow, so his smile seems wholly alive, wise, and sure. That first night. I said go back. I begged you. I guess you did. Ive forgotten. No you havent. No you havent, Harry. His breath chuffs o canada goose bomber n the Ha of Harry. Let me tell you something. Will you listen? Sure. Right and wrong, he says, and stops; his big head shifts, and the stiff downward lines of his mouth and bad eye s canada goose bomber how. Right and wrong arent dropped from the sky. We, We make them, Against misery. Invariably, Harry, invariblyhe grows confident of his ability to negotiate long wordsmisery follows their disobedience. Not our own, often at first not our own. Now youve had an example of that in your own life. Rabbit wonders when the tear-trails appeared on Totheros cheeks; there they are, like snail-tracks. Do
shape the conduct of a woman in life. Take for instance the wonderfully subtle analysis of a womans heart as wife and mother that we find in Une Vie. Could aught be more delicately inc canada goose bomber isive? Sometimes in describing the apparently inexplicable conduct of a certain woman he leads his readers to a point where a false step would destroy the spell and bring the reproach of banality and ridicule upon the tale. But the catastrophe never occurs. It was necessary to stand poised upon the brink of the precipice to realize the depth of the abyss and feel the terror of the fall. Closely allied to this pha canada goose bomber se of Maupassants nature was the peculiar feeling of loneliness that every now and then breaks irresistibly forth in the course of some short story. Of kindly soul and genial heart, he suffered not