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Orson returned to the kitchen with this inadequately tacky ite to look uniht-inch pillow featured a needlepoint sa items that had been manufactured by--and sold to raise funds for--a popular television evangelist Inside an elaborate border were eight words in scrollwork stitching: JESUS EATS SINNERS AND SPITS OUT SAVED SOULS

"You didn’t find this tacky?" Sasha asked disbelievingly

"Tacky, yes," Bobby said, strapping the loaded a up froh standards," I said

The year after I gave Bobby the pillow, I presented him with a ceramic sculpture of Elvis Presley Elvis is depicted in one of his glitziest white-silk-and-sequins Vegas stage outfits while sitting on the toilet where he died; his hands are clasped in prayer, his eyes are raised to Heaven, and there’s a halo around his head

In this yuletide coe because he insists on actually going into gift shops in search of the perfect trash Because of h catalogs of exquisitely tacky ress

Turning the pillow over in his hands, frowning at Orson, Bobby said, "Neat trick"

"No trick," I said "There were evidently a lot of different experi the intelligence of both huus"

"Truth"

"Insane"

"Entirely"

I instructed Orson to take the pillow back where he’d found it, then to go to the bedroo door, and return with one of the black dress loafers that Bobby had bought when he’d discovered that he had only thongs, sandals, and athletic shoes to wear to my mother’s memorial service

The kitchen was redolent with the aroly at the oven

"You’ll get your share," I assured him "Now scoot"

As Orson started out of the kitchen, Bobby said, "Wait"

Orson regarded him expectantly

"Not just a shoe And not just a loafer The loafer foras if to say that this conificant, Orson proceeded on his errand

Out over the Pacific, a blazing staircase of lightning connected the heavens to the sea, as if signaling the descent of archangels The subsequent crash of thunder rattled the s and reverberated in the cottage walls

Along this temperate coast, our storms are rarely accompanied by pyrotechnics of this kind Apparently ere scheduled for a

I put a can of red-pepper flakes on the table, then paper plates and the insulated serving pads on which Sasha placed the pizzas

"Mungojerrie," said Bobby

"It’s a name from a book of poems about cats"

"Seereed

"Fluffy," Bobby said "Now that’s a na a vent cap on the roof and whistling in the eaves I couldn’t be sure, but I thought that I heard, in the distance, the loonlike cries of the troop

Bobby reached doith one hand to reposition the shotgun, which was on the floor beside his chair

"Fluffy or Boots," he said "Those are solid cat names"

With a knife and fork, Sasha cut a slice of pepperoni pizza into bite-size pieces and set it aside to cool for Orson

The dog returned from the bedroom with one loafer in his mouth He presented it to Bobby It was for the left foot

Bobby carried the shoe to the flip-top trash can and disposed of it "It’s not the toothdrool," he assured Orson "I don’t plan ever to wear dress shoes again, anyway"

I remembered the envelope from Thor’s Gun Shop that had been on ht before It had been slightly damp and stippled with curious indentations Saliva Tooth marks Orson was the person who had put my father’s pistol where I would be sure to find it

Bobby returned to the table and sat staring at the dog

"So?" I asked

"What?"

"You knohat"

"I need to say it?"

"Yeah"

Bobby sighed "I feel as if one honking huge h my head and just about sucked my brain out in the backwash"

"You’re a hit," I told Orson

Sasha had been fanning one hand over the dog’s share of pizza to ensure that the cheese wouldn’t be hot enough to stick to the roof of his mouth and burn hied his tail against table and chair legs as he set about proving that high intelligence does not necessarily correlate with good table manners

"Silky," Bobby said "Simple name A cat name Silky"

As we ate pizza and drank beer, the three flickering candles provided barely enough light for es of yellow lined tablet paper on which my father had written a concise account of the activities at Wyvern, the unanticipated developments that had spiraled into catastrophe, and the extent of h Dad wasn’t a scientist and could only recount--largely in layman’s terms--what my mother had told him, there was a wealth of information in the document he had left for me

"‘A little delivery boy,’" I said "That’s what Lewis Stevenson said to ed him from the man he’d once been ‘A little delivery boy that wouldn’t die’ He was talking about a retrovirus Apparently, my mother theorized a new kind of retrovirus…with the selectivity of a retrotransposon"

When I looked up fro at me blank-eyed

He said, "Orson probably knohat you’re talking about, bro, but I dropped out of college"