i heard you were looking for me.
yes.
do i have to? who's the little girl?
thought you were another wife, maybe.
that's what he wanted--a ten-year- old wife. he'd come home from a war or a safari, and he'd wind up talking to the little kids.
honey--alcoholics anonymous takes all the time i've got--and harold ryan is an individual i would rather forget. he drove me to drink. he drove his first two wives to drink.
premature ejaculation.
no grown woman is a fan of premature ejaculation. harold would come home trumpeting and roaring. he would the kick the furniture with his boots, spit into corners and the fireplace. he would make me presents of stuffed fish and helmets with holes in them. he would tell me that he had now earned the reward that only a woman could give him, and he'd tear off my clothes. he would carry me into the bedroom, telling me to scream and kick my feet. that was very important to him. i did it. i tried to be a good wife. he told me to imagine a herd of stampeding water buffalo. i couldn't do that, but i pretended i did. it was all over--ten seconds after he'd said the word "buffalo." then he'd zip up his pants, and go outside, and tell true war stories to the little kids. any little kids.
is it? i have this theory about why men kill each other and break things.
never mind. it's a dumb theory. i was going to say it was all sexual. but everything is sexual. but alcohol. peace.
two days later. the afternoon of the day of looseleaf harper's mother-in-law's funeral. you got it? two days later. you know what happened in heaven today? there was a tornado. i'm not kidding you--there was a goddamn tornado. tore up fifty-six houses, a dance pavilion and a ferris wheel. drove a shuffleboard stick clear through a telephone pole. nobody got killed. nobody ever gets killed. they just bounce around a lot. then they get up-- and start playing shuffleboard. i never saw a tornado when i was alive, and i grew up in oklahoma. there's this big, black, funnel- shaped cloud. sounds like a railroad train without the whistle. i had to come to heaven to see a thing like that. a lot of people got photographs. after the tornado was over, a man had some film left and he wanted to take pictures of me--to use up the roll. i don't like people who go around taking pictures of everything. nothing's real to some people unless they've got photographs. two days later--right?