Thinner(3)

He hugs her back and suddenly someone turns on a big stereo amplifier in the front of his brain and he hears the double-thud again.. the first as the Ninety-Eight's front bumper strikes the old Gypsy woman with the bright red cloth kerchief over her scraggly hair, the second as the big front wheels pass over her body.

Heidi screams.

And her hand leaves Halleck's lap.

Halleck hugs his daughter tighter, feeling goose flesh break all over his body.

'More eggs?' Heidi asked, breaking into his reverie.

'No. No, thanks.' He looked at his clean plate with some guilt: no matter how bad things got, they had never gotten bad enough to cause him to lose either sleep or his appetite.

'Are you sure you're ... ?'

'Okay?' He smiled. 'I'm okay, you're okay, Linda's okay. As they say on the soap operas, the nightmare is over - can we please get back to our lives?'

'That's a lovely idea.' This time she returned his smile with a real one of her own - she was suddenly under thirty again, and radiant. 'Want the rest of the bacon? There's two slices left.'

'No,' he said, thinking of the way his pants nipped at his soft waist (what waist, ha-ha? a small and unfunny Don Rickles spoke up in his mind - the last time you had a waist was around 1978, you hockey puck), the way he had to suck in his gut to hook the catch. Then he thought of the scale and said, 'I'll have one of them. I've lost three pounds.'

She had gone to the stove in spite of his original no sometimes she knows me so well it gets to be depressing, he thought. Now she glanced back. 'You are still thinking about it, then.'

'I'm not,' he said, exasperated. 'Can't a man lose three pounds in peace? You keep saying you'd like me a little . . .'

thinner

'. . . a little less beefy.' Now she had gotten him thinking about the Gypsy again. Dammit! The Gypsy's eaten nose and the scaly feel of that one finger sliding along his cheek in the moment before he had reacted and jerked away the way you would jerk away from a spider or from a clittering bundle of beetles fuming in a knot under a rotted log.

She brought him the bacon and kissed his temple. 'I'm sorry. You go right ahead and lose some weight. But if you don't, remember what Mr Rogers says -'

*- I like you just the way you are,' they finished in unison.

He prodded at the overturned Journal by the lazy Susan, but that was just too depressing. He got up, went outside, and found the New York Times in the flowerbed. The kid always threw it in the flowerbed, never had his numbers right at the end of the week, could never remember Bill's last name. Billy had wondered on more than one occasion if it was possible for a twelve-year-old kid to become a victim of Alzheimer's disease.

He took the paper back inside, opened it to the sports, and ate the bacon. He was deep in the box scores when Heidi brought him another half of English muffin, golden with melting butter.

Halleck ate it almost without being aware he was doing so.

Chapter Two

In the city, a damage suit that had dragged on for over three years - a suit he had expected to drag on in one shape or another for the next three or four years - came to an unexpected and gratifying end at midmorning, with the plaintiff agreeing during a court recess to settle for an amount that was nothing short of stupefying. Halleck lost no time getting said plaintiff, a paint manufacturer from Schenectady, and his client to sign a letter of good intent in the judge's chambers. The plaintiffs lawyer had looked on with palpable dismay and disbelief while his client, president of the Good Luck Paint Company, scratched his name on six copies of the letter and as the court clerk notarized copy after copy, his bald head gleaming mellowly. Billy sat quietly, hands folded in his lap, feeling as if he had won the New York lottery. By lunch hour it was all over but the shouting.

Billy took himself and the client to O'Lunney's, ordered Chivas in a water glass for the client and a martini for himself, and then called Heidi at home.

'Mohonk,' he said when she picked up the phone. It was a rambling upstate New York resort where they had spent their honeymoon - a gift from Heidi's parents - a long, long time ago. Both of them had fallen in love with the place, and they had spent two vacations there since.

'What?'

"Mohonk,' he repeated. 'If you don't want to go, I'll ask Jillian from the office.'

'No, you won't! Billy, what is this?'

'Do you want to go or not?'

'Of Course I do! This weekend?'

'Tomorrow, if you can get Mrs Bean to come in and check on Linda and make sure the wash gets done and that there aren't any orgies going on in front of the TV in the family room. And if -'

But Heidi's squeal temporarily drowned him out. 'Your case, Billy! The paint fumes and the nervous breakdown and the psychotic episode and -'

'Canley is going to settle. In fact, Canley has settled. After about fourteen years of boardroom bullshit and long legal opinions meaning exactly nothing, your husband has finally won one for the good guys. Clearly, decisively, and without a doubt. Canley's settled, and I'm on top of the world.'

'Billy! God!' She squealed again, this time so loud the phone distorted. Billy held it away from his ear, grinning. 'How much is your guy getting?'

Billy named the figure and this time he had to hold the phone away from his ear for almost five seconds.