And when the spoon hit the card houses, it was so interesting; it didn’t matter whose was hit, it was just fun to see what happened. They noted that the card houses acted in one of two ways when struck by a direct hit. Thwap! They either collapsed instantly, the cards scattering, or else they resisted, settled down a little, and somehow in the hunkering down lost little or none of their structural integrity, their ability to hold up. Perhaps curiosity about that made Dennis an engineer.

Random images, in the exhausted mind. Where did that come from, he thinks. Ah. We’re the card house now. There’s never a situation where one card is threatened, the others left in peace; they’re all threatened together and at once. All in a permanent crisis. How long has it been going on? Spoons flying from every direction. And the house of cards either holds or flies apart.

He’s too tired for this, too depressed; there’s no comfort in him to give. Lucy begins to sob in earnest. He tries to remember the Keilbacher girl; he only saw her a few times, flitting in and out. Blond hair. A lively kid. Nice. Easier to imagine Martin and Emma. Ach. Bad luck. Terrible luck. Worse by far than having Judge Andrew Tobiason turn down a protest despite the evidence; worse than anything possible in all that world of corruption and graft. Ach, it’s bad everywhere. Spoons from every direction. He’ll have to check out Jim’s car, make sure it’s all right. He doesn’t know what to say. Lucy always wants something said, words, words, but he doesn’t have any. Are there any words for this? No. Some strange stubbornness, of an interlocking placement, holds certain card houses up, under a fluky barrage of blows.… He hugs her harder, holds them up.

Chapter 61

61

Jim hears about it the next day, from Lucy. “It was Abe who was the paramedic called to the accident.”

“Oh, no. You’re kidding.”

“No, and he drove by to tell the Keilbachers, but they weren’t home, so he came by to tell me. He looked bad.”

“I bet.”

Jim tries to get Abe on the phone, but Abe’s parents are still on vacation and there’s no answer up at the house; the answering machine is off.