“No, the kid and I were just wondering if and if so when the hell we’re going to get a home-cooked meal around here.”

“Oh I know,” she sings, “I hate it too, it’s just that with Mildred out so much we’ve had to go into her books, and her system is really zilch.” Zilch: he hears another voice in hers. “Honestly,” she sings on, “if it turns out she’s been swindling Daddy of millions none of us will be surprised.”

“Yeah. Look, Janice. It sounds like you’re having a lot of fun over there—”

“Fun? I’m working, sweetie.”

“Sure. Now what the fuck is really going on?”

“What do you mean, going on? Nothing is going on except your wife is trying to bring home a little extra bread.” Bread? “ ‘Going on’—really. You may think your seven or whatever dollars an hour you get for sitting in the dark diddling that machine is wonderful money, Harry, but the fact is a hundred dollars doesn’t buy anything anymore, it just goes.”

“Jesus, why am I getting this lecture on inflation? All I want to know is why my wife is never home to cook the fucking supper for me and the fucking kid.”

“Harry, has somebody been bugging you about me?”

“Bugging? How would they do that? Janice. Just tell me, shall I put two TV dinners in the oven or what?”

A pause, during which he has a vision: sees her wings fold up, her song suspended: imagines himself soaring, rootless, free. An old premonition, dim. Janice says, with measured words, so he feels as when a child watching his mother levelling tablespoons of sugar into a bowl of batter, “Could you, sweet? Just for tonight? We’re in the middle of a little crisis here, frankly. It’s too complicated to explain, but we have to get some figures firm or we can’t do the paychecks tomorrow.”

“Who’s this we? Your father there?”

“Oh sure.”

“Could I talk to him a second?”

“Why? He’s out on the lot.”

“I want to know if he got those tickets for the Blasts game. The kid’s dying to go.”

“Well, actually, I don’t see him, I guess he’s gone home for supper.”

“So it’s just you and Charlie there.”

“Other people are in and out. We’re desperately trying to untangle this mess Mildred made. This is the last night, Harry, I promise. I’ll be home between eight and nine, and then tomorrow night let’s all go to a movie together. That space thing is still in West Brewer, I noticed this morning driving in.”

Rabbit is suddenly tired, of this conversation, of everything. Confusing energy surrounds him. A man’s appetites diminish, but the world’s never. “O.K. Be home when you can. But we got to talk.”

“I’d love to talk, Harry.” From her tone she assumes “talk” means fuck, when he did mean talk. She hangs up: a satisfied impatient sound.