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have never heard him complain, not even about his brain-damaged but apparently contented daughter, whom he permits to sit with him in the front seat, but only on weekends, and when the car is empty, or when I alone occupy it.
    It is a large car. I remember having no exact figure in mind when the manager of the garage in Texarkana asked me how long I wanted it, so I simply extended my legs from the desk chair I was sitting in and suggested it be two feet longer than the current standard model. What happened was that three years ago, when it came time to turn in my previous car, which had done over 150,000 miles, the Cadillac people had come up with an austerity-model limousine, fit for two short people, preferably to ride to a funeral in. The dividing glass between driver and driven was not automatic, there was no separate control for heat or air conditioning in the back, and the jump seats admitted only two, because now the axle was raised a good six inches, making it impossible to furnish uninterrupted seat space stretching across the middle (all these features were Cadillac's accommodation to the fuel economies specified by Congress). This simply would not do: I use the car constantly, require the room, privacy, and my own temperature gauge, else I'd have to live off Jerry's, and how could that air, cold or hot, find its way aft with the partition closed, which is how I usually keep it, so that Jerry can listen to the radio, while I do my telephoning or dictation?
    There was, as usual, a market solution. You go out (this was in 1978) and buy a plain old Cadillac. You deliver it to a gentleman in Texarkana. He chops it in two, and installs whatever you want. Cost? Interesting: within one thousand dollars of the regular limousine, and I actually don't remember which side. The only problem is that people who come into the car will, unless warned, wheel about and sit down allowing for the conventional interval.
    They land on the floor, because the back seat is—two feet behind where it normally is.
    Olga is up with Jerry. Rebeca sits with me. Rowley is sleeping, over the heat ducts, but we are used to this. The briefcases and other paraphernalia have been carried out of my office. I ask Jerry if he turned on the burglar alarm in the house (Gloria has taken the train, to meet an early appointment), and he says yes, he did. For fifteen years we didn't even have a key to the house, having lost the one the owners left us. But then there was a burglary, and they took all the silver. I say "they" because notwithstanding that there were servants sleeping on the third floor, the burglars took their time, and evidently were, or became, hungry: the next morning, when the police came, the remains of two table settings, rather formal under the circumstances, I thought, were still there on the kitchen table with the apple cores, bread crumbs, and so on. The diners had plenty of silver for their modest needs.
    So now we have one of those alarms which ring first at the switchboard of the company's headquarters in New Jersey. From there, someone reacts by dialing your number. If there is no answer, or if the person who answers does not recite the code word, then the switchboard immediately notifies the police and a neighbor (you have given the switchboard two neighborly neighbors' numbers). The plot is that everyone then convenes at your house, and your neighbor, who has a passkey, opens the door, the police arrest the burglar, and you feel your money was well spent. Several times the police have arrived at our place to find an empty house. The false alarms are embarrassing, but it is also true that there have been no further burglaries.

    I turn on my Dictaphone, and check to see that the battery is alive. It is. It always is. Dictaphone has managed to construct a portable recording machine which is about the only thing around to remind us that we actually won the war against Japan. You turn on the unit, and start to look through your pile of