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Show City Motel 122 "Oh, I guess I never t o ld you about that one. Doesn't matter, anyhow." He slapped his thighs and started to laugh. "Come to think of i t , I've got a g i f t to equal t h i s one from Angus." He gestured, arms wide open, to the household belongings. "He can toss these things to the buzzing hornets and raging l i o n s . " He snapped his teeth in a hungry-lion manner. " L i s t e n , Harold," she said, feverish to share her plans hot from her busy mind, "we can pick wild berries l i k e our pioneer ancestors did, we can take a few extra crackers out of the cracker baskets in restaurants. I've got peaches, cherries, and apricots that I put up last summer. Mustard pickles, d i l l s , and r e l i s h . We'll do j u s t fine until the card expires." They l e f t the next morning after Eva called June to t e l l her to prune the grapevine before i t sprouted new leaves i f she wanted to make grape j e l l y in the f a l l. The breathing, when Mrs. Jackson stopped worrying about what i t was and where i t came from, was actually soothing. It was steady, almost as i f the wall were a pair of bellows, expanding to draw in great volumes of a i r , slowly closing and squeezing the air back into space. Sometimes, the breathing had a f a i n t whistling in i t , almost as i f the anonymous breather (or c o l l e c t i ve breathers, she d i d n ' t know which) had some stuffiness in its nose. The s l i g h t whistling sounded l i k e something she'd heard among older people whose hair has grown s t i f f and wiry in their n o s t r i l s . Mrs. Jackson thought of movie advertisements where she had read about Sensurround. Was she being filmed by a candid camera eye i n s t a l l ed somewhere in the wall - |
