When Mitch McDeere signed on with Bendini, Lambert & Locke of Memphis, he thought he and his beautiful wife, Abby, were on their way. The firm leased him a BMW, paid off his school loans, arranged a mortgage, and hired him a decorator. Mitch McDeere should have remembered what his brother Ray--doing fifteen years in a Tennessee jail-- already knew. You never get nothing for nothing. Now the FBI has the lowdown on Mitch's firm and needs his help. Mitch is caught between a rock and a hard place, with no choice--if he wants to live.
I. SUMMER 1958
The Inadequate Lamp Shade
Summer Job
A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound
Unhappy Mothers
Marion, Waiting
Eddie Is Bored---and Horny, Too
The Door in the Floor
A Masturbating Machine
Come Hither...
The Pawn
Ruth’s Right Eye
Dumping Mrs. Vaughn
Why Panic at Ten O"Clock in the Morning?
How the Writer’s Assistant Beearne a Writer
Something Almost Biblical
The Authority of the Written Word
A Motherless Child
The Leg
Working for Mr. Cole
Leaving Long Island
II. FALL 1990
Eddie at Forty-Eight
Ruth at Thirty-Six
The Red and Blue Air Mattress
Allan at Fifty-Four
Hannah at Thirty-Five
Ted at Seventy-Seven
Ruth Remembers "Learning to Drive
Two Drawers
Pain in an Unfamiliar Place
Ruth Gives Her Father a Driving Lesson
A Widow for the Rest of Her Life
Ruth’s Diary, and Selected Postcards
The First Meeting
Ruth Changes Her Story
Not a Mother, Not Her Son
The Moleman
Followed Home from the Hying Food Circus
Chapter One
Missing Persons
The Standoff
Ruth’s First wedding
III. FALL 1995
The Civil Servant
Tne Reader
The Prostitute’s Daughter
Sergeant Hoekstra Finds His Witness
In Which Eddie O’Hare Falls in Love Again
Mrs. Cole
Better Than Being in Paris with a Prostitute
In Which Eddie and Hannah Fail to Reach an Agreement
A Happy Couple, Their Two Unhappy Friends
Marion at Seventy-Six