Its three oclo the m.
Bishops daughter is ill, stomach pains. Shes sleeping on the couch.
Bishop too is ill, chills and sweating, a flu. He t sleep. In bed, he listens to the occasional groans from two rooms away. Katie is fifteen and spends the summer with him every year.
Outside oreet, someone kicks on a motorcycle and revs it unfivingly. His bedroom is badly placed.
Hes given her Pepto-Bismol, if she wakes agairy Tylenol. He s himself in the sheet, pulls his t-shirt away from his damp chest.
Theres a radio playing somewhere in the building, big-band music, he feels rather than hears it. The steady, friendly air-ditioner hustling in the room.
Earlier hed takeo a doctor, who found nothing. "Youve got a bellyache," the doctor said, "stick with fluids and call me if it doesnt go away." Katie is beautiful, tall with dark hair.
Iernoon theyd gone, groaning, to a horror movie about wolves taking over the city. At vivid moments she jumped against him, pressing her breasts into his back. He moved away.
When they walk together oreet she takes his arm, holding on tightly (because, he figures, she spends so much of her time away, away). Very often people give them peculiar looks.
Hes been pig up old ladies whove been falling down in front of him, these last few days. Oting in the middle of an interse waving her arms while dangerous Checkers curved arouhe old ladies invariably display a superb fighting spirit. "Thank you, young man!"
Hes forty-nine. Writing a history of 19th tury Ameri painting, about which he knows a thing or two.
Not enough.
A groafelt but muted, from the other room. Shes awake.
He gets up and goes in to look at her. The red-and-white cotton robe shes wearing is, tucked up under her knees. "I just threw up again," she says.
"Did it help?"
"A little."
He once asked her what something (a box? a chair?) was made of and she told him it was made out of tree.
"Do you want to try a glass of milk?"
"I dont want any milk," she says, turning to lie on her front. "Sit with me."
He sits on the edge of the coud rubs her back. "Think of something terrific," he says. "Lets get your mind off your stomach. Think about fishing. Think about the time you threw the hotel keys out of the window." Once, in Paris, she had done just that, from a sixth-floor window, and Bishop had had visions of some Fren walking down the Quai des Grands-Augustins with a set of heavy iron hotel keys buried in his brain. Hed found the keys in a potted plant outside the hotel door.
"Daddy," she says, not looking at him.
"Yes?"
"Why do you live like this? By yourself?"
"Who am I going to live with?"
"You could find somebody. Youre handsome for ye."
"Oh very good. Thats very . I thank you."
"You dont try."
This is and is not true.
"How much do you weigh?"
"Oy-five."
"You could lose some weight."
"Look, kid, gimme a break." He blots his forehead with his arm. "You want some cambric tea?"
"Youve given up."
"Not so," he says. "Katie, go to sleep now. Think of a great big pile of Gucci handbags."
She sighs and turns her head away.
Bishop goes into the kit and turns on the light. He wonders what a drink would do to him, or for him -- put him to sleep? He decides against it. He turns oiny kit TV and spends a few minutes watg some kind of Japanese monster movie. The poo