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The kitchen was done in thirty-year-old linoleum with cabinets painted an intense shade of pink The appliances made the room look like an illustration from an old issue of Ladies’ Home Journal There was a small built-in breakfast nook with newspapers piled up on one bench, and a narroooden table with a perar bowl, paper-napkin dispenser, salt and pepper shakers shaped like ducks, a mustard jar, ketchup bottle, and a bottle of A-l Sauce I could see his sandwich preparations laid out too: an assortment of processed cheese slices and a lunchmeat laced with olives and ominous chunks of animal snout

He sat down and motioned me into the bench across from him I shoved aside some of the newspapers and took a seat

He was already slathering Miracle Whip on that brand 01 soft white bread that can double as a foaaged in pornographic practices He laid a thin slice of onion on the bread and then peeled the cellophane wrap fro with layers of lettuce, dill pickles, ry?"

"Starved," I said I’d eaten a mere thirty ain The way I looked at it, the sandas filled with preservatives, whichbad He cut the firsthalf to me, and then he made a second sandwich more lavish than the first and cut that one, too I watched hinal to eat

For threedown lunch He popped open a beer for me and a second one for himself I despise Miracle Whip but, in this instance, it seeertips left dents near the crust

Between bites, I dabbed the corners of my mouth with a paper napkin "I don’t know your first name," I said

"Phil What kind of name is Kinsey?"

"My mother’s maiden name"

And that was the extent of the social niceties until we’d both pushed our plates back with a sigh of relief

Chapter 11

After lunch, we sat out on the deck in painted metal porch chairs pockmarked with rust The deck was actually a shelf of poured concrete, fore, which had been carved into the hillside Wooden planters filled with annuals formed a low protective barrier around the peri the heavy blanket of sunshine that settled on one He’d been pacified perhaps by the many chemicals in his lunch, but ar he was clipping with a pocket guillotine He plucked a big wooden kitchenthe surface of the deck to scratch it into life He puffed on the cigar until it drew fully, then shook the match out and dropped it in a flat tin ashtray For a moment, we both sat and stared out at the ocean

The vieas like a mural painted on a blue backdrop The islands in the channel looked grim and deserted, twenty-six miles out On the mainland, the small beaches were faintly visible, the surf like a tiny ruffle of white lace The palus I could pick out a few land Catholic church, a theater, the one office building don over three stories high Froe point, there was no evidence of the Victorian influence or any of the later architectural styles that blended noith the Spanish

This house, he told me, had been finished in the suht the place when the Korean War broke out He’d been drafted and had gone off two days after theyReva with stacks of cardboard boxes to unpack, returning fourteen months later with a service-related disability He didn’t specify what it was and I didn’t ask, but he had apparently only worked sporadically since his e They’d had five children and Rick had been the youngest The others were scattered now through the Southwest

"What was he like?" I asked I wasn’t sure he’d answer The silence stretched on and I wondered if perhaps itquestion I hated to spoil whatever sense of camaraderie we’d established

He shook his head finally "I don’t kno to answer that," he said "He was one of those kids you think you’re never going to have a s without being told, good grades in school Then when he was sixteen or so-his last year in high school-he seeht, but he didn’t seerades for college and God knows I’d have found thedid Oh, he worked, but it never amounted to a hill of beans,"