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Show Motherlunge a novel 167 "Right," I said. Across the room Jack pointed to X., his own left eye, his breast pocket-he was miming to me that I should watch X. while he while he (Jack) went to heat up a bottle of breastmilk. I gave him the thumbs up. "So what else is new?" I asked. "How's work?" My nephew was sitting propped up by a donut-shaped pillow on the floor, chewing on a plastic toy phone. Slowly, hyperosmolotically, two strands of glittering spittle descended, connecting his mouth to the floor; he ran his fat hands through them the way a harpist rakes glissando. X. was getting his first tooth, Jack claimed. "This weekend, I had to cover in the children's section," Walter said, and started coughing. "That was Saturday. Fun." "How could Judith do that to you?" Judith, the head librarian at Supernal Public Library, was still his supervisor thirty years after she'd hired him. I'd seen her over New Year's; she still had the same head of chestnut hair in a flip, body by Jack LaLane in a washable pantsuit. She and Walter still had coffee every day at ten thirty. They sat in the 3Bee's cafe next to the library, often each with a small stack of books to trade to the other; they were both fast readers and could each finish several books within the three-week checkout period. Sitting there in the cafe, they were like one of those long-distance trucking couples. She could have sewn curtains for the sleeping compartment on the cab. She would have chosen a literary CB handle for them-Dashiell and Lillian-and read aloud to him book after book as they sat twelve feet up in the air, barreling along the high plains, Judith's mouth moving soundlessly behind the window glass. "Budget cuts," Walter said. "It's not like we have a lot of extra staff, and Judith was sick." |