Activity

That first year, ratings slip a bit, as they always do. They level out at incredible. MGE stock splits three times in nine months. Alex buys a car so expensive he’s afraid to drive it. He takes the bus to work. Dee and the cue-card lady acquire property in the canyons. Faye explores IRA’s with the …

“If the girl plays ball, then you, deMott, you start in on helping the kid shelter her income. Tell her we’ll give her shelter through MGE. Take her from the seventy bracket to something more like a twenty. Capisce? She’s got to play ball, with a carrot like that.”

“We are with each other now,” Martin was saying. “And in the different ways it means, we must try to make a life.”

Out over the Sfondrata chapel tower, where the fog had broken, she thought she saw a single star, like the distant nose of a jet; there were people in the clayey clouds. She turned,…

“You bought the Spearsons a new picnic bench?”

“Yes, I did.”

She thought about this. “Didn’t they think you were being hostile?”

“Oh … I think, yes, they probably thought it was hostile.”

Adrienne breathed deeply, in and out. “I killed a baby,” she whispered.

“Yes, we have all killed a baby—there is a baby in all of us. That is why people come to me, to be reunited with it.”

“No, I’ve killed a real one.”

Ilke was very quiet and then she said, “You can do the side-lying now.…