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"Well, that sounds aet out of here for soo?"

I took a deep breath "Sure," I said I wasn’t sure at all, but my mind had apparently ave a funny little nod, and went out through the gate Jack disappeared behind hile

Chapter 10

HOMERO

10 The Mask

He is lying on his own exa his eyes The telephone buzzes quietly but Mrs Quintana, his receptionist, has given up the battle with insurance for hands over his face, the fingertips lightly touching his forehead, thu on the maxillary bones beneath his eyes His office in the hospital basement is cool even in this late-September heat, and pleasant in winter as well As practical and co as a cave The lack of s has never been a proble is adequate He has just examined his last patient of the day, a sixteen-year-old with six se of her left ear She is expecting twins They will be born small, and in trouble There was no reason to tell her everything

He iold wires were inserted through flesh and spongy bone It would have to be painful He is s, but can’t be bothered with prophylactics

He drifts betakefulness and sleep, thinking of Codi Her eyes are downturned and secretive, her heart clearly hardened against him already, to have done this Her hair is in her eyes She flips it sideways, chewing the inside of her lip and looking out the hen he talks to her She’d wanted pierced ears at thirteen; he’d explained that self-mutilation was preposterous and archaic Now they discuss shoes He wants to ask, "Do you knohat you have inside you? Does your sister know?" Hallie is young to understand reproductive matters but it’s impossible that she wouldn’t know, they’re so le mind, and he is outside of it completely He has no idea what he can say

She’s in the fifth or sixth h Codi was always too thin and now is dangerously thin, and so skillful at disguising it with her clothes he can only tell by other signs The deepened pige of her nose, for one thing, is identical to the nancy Alice wore both times, first with Codi, then with Hallie It stuns him He feels a sharp pain in his spleen when he looks across the breakfast table each host of their happiest time returned to inhabit thehe has daether His family is a web of women dead and alive, with himself at the center like a spider, driven by different instincts He liesonly in the tactile way that a spider hears, touching the threads of the ith long extended fingertips and listening Listening for trapped life

Chapter 11

COSIMA

11 A River on the Moon

Loyd and I didn’t go to Whiteriver He was called out on Friday for a seven-day stand on a switch engine in Lordsburg He seeo another time Loyd didn’t have much seniority on the railroad; he’d only moved back to Grace a few years earlier, and at Southern Pacific he was still getting what he called "bumped" a lot It was hard to plan his time off

I was so into, and had my doubts Once I found out, I had a in the old plu dead branches out of the trees My job wastimber It was a fair distance fro to keep an eye on hi froht, believe me Even if he isn’t your husband

JT infor a break just then, leaning on one hand against a tree trunk and drinking what seeallons of water

I was stunned "Youto Loyd?"

"He invited ahed atyou’d eat Cornish hens"

He laughed too He offeredit back I was surprised at the easy intih school-he was, after all, captain of the football teah no meanness on his part, but siation, we h school on different planets Being neighbors again now brought back e’d forgotten then: we had a relationship that dated back even before Ehbors in toddlerhood We’d played together before