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Show 63 Melanie had begun doing imprudent things that summer, because that would destroy their peace forever, and he knew what it was to have your peace destroyed. His appointment was at one o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon, but unfortunately he slept through it. When he called to apologize the receptionist was cool and distant with him, and said that unless it was an emergency she could not reschedule him before August. He thanked her and wrote down the new appointment on a piece of paper which he taped to the mirror in his bathroom where he would see it every time he brushed his teeth or shaved or bent close to examine the circles under his eyes. His father's suggestion gave him more trouble. He didn't actually chase around all that much, he reflected when he tried to think where to cut back. His job was part of the problem, but he couldn't help that. He worked as night custodian in a machine shop out near the airport, and the hours were inimical to normal patterns of living. He went to work at five in the afternoon, pulling into the parking lot just as the welders, lathe and drill press operators, draftsmen and secretaries were pulling out to go home. He cleaned offices and swept metal filings while the sky grew dark outside and a stale wind came off the lake, and left between one and one-thirty in the morning, arriving home close to two o'clock, so wound up from hating his job that he rarely got to sleep before three. On the other hand he usually slept till noon, unless his mother or his brother or one of his sisters woke him earlier, which they usually didn't do because he was always unpleasant. That gave him nine hours of sleep, sometimes ten, as on the day he missed his appointment. That ought to have been enough, even allowing for the fits of coughing that shook him awake several times a night. That he nevertheless woke up each afternoon feeling wasted and corrupt was due, he decided, to his living all summer in a twilight world, not to getting too little sleep. |