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