TV had rarely looked so good since.

Mary came in and saw him looking at the TV, his empty scotch-rocks glass in his hand.

“Your dinner’s ready, Bart,” she said. “You want it in here?

He looked at her, wondering exactly when he had seen the dare-you grin on her lips for the last time… exactly when the little line between her eyes had begun to be there all the time, like a wrinkle, a scar, a tattoo proclaiming age.

You wonder about some things, he thought, that you’d never in God’s world want to know. Now why the hell is that?

“Bart?”

“Let’s eat in the dining room,” he said. He got up and snapped the TV off.

“All right.”

They sat down. He looked at the meal in the aluminum tray. Six little compartments, and something that looked pressed in each one. The meat had gravy on it. It was his impression that the meats in TV dinners always had gravy on them. TV dinner-meat would look naked without gravy, he thought, and then he remembered his thought about Lorne Green for absolutely no reason at all: Boy, I’ll snatch you bald-headed.

It didn’t amuse him this time. Somehow it scared him.

“What were you sbiling about in the living roob, Bart?” Mary asked. Her eyes were red from her cold, and her nose had a chapped, raw look.

“I don’t remember,” he said, and for the moment he thought: I’ll just scream now, I think. For lost things. For your grin, Mary. Pardon me while I just throw back my head and scream for the grin that’s never there on your face anymore. Okay?

“You looked very habby,” she said.

Against his will-it was a secret thing, and tonight he felt the needed his secret things, tonight his feelings felt as raw as Mary’s nose looked-against his will he said: “I was thinking of the time we went out picking up bottles to finish paying for that TV. The RCA console.”

“Oh, that,” Mary said, and then sneezed into her hankie over her TV dinner.

He ran into Jack Hobart at the Stop 'n' Shop. Jack’s cart was full of frozen foods, heat-and-serve canned products, and a lot of beer.

“Jack!” he said. “What are you doing way over here?”

Jack smiled a little. “I haven’t got used to the other store yet, so thought…”

“Where’s Ellen?”

“She had to fly back to Cleveland,” he said. “Her mother died.”

“Jesus, I’m sorry Jack. Wasn’t that sudden?”

Shoppers were moving all around them under the cold overhead lights. Muzak came down from hidden speakers, old standards that you could never quite recognize. A woman with a full cart passed them, dragging a screaming three-year-old in a blue parka with snot on the sleeves.

“Yeah, it was,” Jack Hobart said. He smiled meaninglessly and looked down into his cart. There was a large yellow bag there that said:

Use It, Throw It Away!

Sanitary!

“Yeah, it was. She’d been feeling punk, thank you, but she thought it might have been a, you know, sort of leftover from change of life. It was cancer. They opened her up, took a look, and sewed her right back up. Three weeks later she was dead. Hell of a hard thing for Ellen. I mean, she only twenty years younger.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“So she’s out in Cleveland for a little while.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

They looked at each other and grinned shamefacedly over the fact of death.

“How is it?” he asked. “Out there in Northside?”

“Well, I’ll tell you the truth, Bart. Nobody seems very friendly.”

“No?”

“You know Ellen works down at the bank?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Well, a lot of the girls used to have a car pool-I used to let Ellen have the car every Thursday. That was her part. There’s a pool out in Northside into the city, but all the women who use it are part of some club that Ellen can’t join unless she’s been there at least a year.”

“That sounds pretty damn close to discrimination, Jack.”

“Fuck them,” Jack said angrily. “Ellen wouldn’t join their goddam club if they crawled up the street on their hands and knees. I got her her own car. A used Buick. She loves it. Should have done it two years ago.”

“How’s the house?”

“It’s fine,” Jack said, and sighed. “The electricity’s high, though. You should see our bill. That’s no good for people with a kid in college.”

They shuffled. Now that Jack’s anger had passed, the shamefaced grin was back on his face. He realized that Jack was almost pathetically glad to see someone from the neighborhood and was prolonging the moment. He had a sudden vision of Jack knocking around in the new house, the sound from the TV filling the rooms with phantom company, his wife a thousand miles away seeing her mother into the ground.

“Listen, why don’t you come back to the house?” he asked. “We’ll have a couple of six-packs and listen to Howard Cosell explain everything that’s wrong with the NFL.”

“Hey, that’d be great.”

“Just let me call Mary after we check out.”

He called Mary and Mary said okay. She said she would put some frozen pastries in the oven and then go to bed so she wouldn’t give Jack her cold.

“How does he like it out there?” she asked.

“Okay, I guess. Mare, Ellen’s mother died. She’s out in Cleveland for the funeral. Cancer.”

“Oh, no.”

“So I thought Jack might like the company, you know-”

“Sure, of course.” She paused. “Did you tell hib we bight be neighbors before log?”

“No,” he said. “I didn’t tell him that.”

“You ought to. It bight cheer hib ub.”

“Sure. Good-bye, Mary.”

“Bye.

“Take some aspirin before you go to bed.”

“I will.”

“Bye.”

“Bye, George.” She hung up.

He looked at the phone, chilled. She only called him that when she was very pleased with him. Fred-and-George had been Charlie’s game originally.

He and Jack Hobart went home and watched the game. They drank a lot of beer. But it wasn’t so good.

When Jack was getting into his car to go home at quarter past twelve, he looked up bleakly and said: “That goddam highway. That’s what fucked up the works.”

“It sure did.” He thought Jack looked old, and it scared him. Jack was about his age.

“You keep in touch, Bart.”

“I will.”

They grinned hollowly at each other, a little drunk, a little sick. He watched Jack’s car until its taillights had disappeared down the long, curving hill.

He was a little hung-over and a little sleepy from staying up so late. The sound of the laundry washers kicking onto the extract cycle seemed loud in his ears, and the steady thump-hiss of the shirt presses and the ironer made him want to wince.

Freddy was worse. Freddy was playing the very devil today.

Listen, Fred was saying. This is your last chance, my boy. You’ve still got all afternoon to get over to Monohan’s office. If you let it wait until five o’clock, it’s going to be too late.

The option doesn’t run out until midnight.

Sure it doesn’t. But right after work Monohan is going to feel a pressing need to go see some relatives. In Alaska. For him it means the difference between a forty-five-thousand-dollar commission and fifty thousand dollars-the price of a new car. For that kind of money you don’t need a pocket calculator. For that kind of money you might discover relatives in the sewer system under Bombay.

But it didn’t matter. It had gone too far. He had let the machine tun without him too long. He was hypnotized by the coming explosion, almost lusted for it. His belly groaned in its own juices.

He spent most of the afternoon in the washroom, watching Ron Stone and Dave run test loads with one of the new laundry products. It was loud in the washroom. The noise hurt his tender head, but it kept him from hearing his thoughts.