Thinner

Suddenly he thought of Ginelli. What would Ginelli tell his daughter if he was here now? You got to keep the undesirables out of town, sweetness. Because that is really what it's all about – just keeping the undesirables out of town.

But that was more truth than he could muster.

'Yes, I suppose they were. They were Gypsies, hon. Vagabonds.'

'Mom said they were crooks.'

'A lot of them run crooked games and tell fake fortunes. When they come to a town like Fairview, the police ask them to move on. Usually they put up a show of being mad, but they really don't mind.'

Bang! A little flag went up inside his head. Lie # 1.

'They hand out posters or fliers saying where they'll be – usually they make a cash deal with a farmer or with someone who owns a field outside of town. After a few days they leave.'

'Why do they come at all? What do they do?'

'Well … there are always people who want their fortunes read. And there are games of chance. Gambling. Usually they are crooked.'

Or maybe a fast, exotic lay, Halleck thought. He saw the kick pleat of the girl's skirt shift again as she stepped into the van. How would she move? His mind answered: Like the ocean getting ready to storm, that's how.

'Do people buy drugs from them?'

These days you don't need to buy drugs from Gypsies, dear; you can buy those in the schoolyard.

'Hashish, maybe,' he said, 'or opium.'

He had come to this part of Co

'I thought the common was public property,' Linda said. 'That's what we learned in school.'

'Well, in a way it is,' Halleck said. – '"Common" means commonly owned by the townspeople. The taxpayers.'

Bong! Lie #2. Taxation had nothing at all to do with common land in New England, ownership of or use of. See Richards vs. Jerram, New Hampshire, or Baker vs. Olins (that one went back to 1835), or …

'The taxpayers.' she said in a musing voice.

'You need a permit to use the common.'

Clang! Lie #3. That idea had been overturned in 1931, when a bunch of poor potato farmers set up a Hooverville in the heart of Lewiston, Maine. The city had appealed to Roosevelt's Supreme Court and hadn't even gotten a hearing. That was because the Hooverites had picked Pettingill Park to camp in, and Pettingill Park happened to be common land.

'Like when the Shrine Circus comes,' he amplified.

'Why didn't the Gypsies get a permit, Dad?' She sounded sleepy now. Thank God.

'Well, maybe they forgot.'

Not a snowball's chance in hell, Lin. Not in Fairview. Not when you see the common from Lantern Drive and the country club, not when that view is part of what you paid for, along with the private schools which teach computer programming on banks of brand-new Apples and TRS-80's, and the relatively clean air, and the quiet at night. The Shrine Circus is okay. The Easter-egg hunt is even better. But Gypsies? Here's your hat, what's your hurry. We know dirt when we see it. Not that we touch it, Christ, no! We have maids and housekeepers to get rid of dirt in our houses. When it shows up on the town common, we've got Hopley.

But those truths are not for a girl in junior high, Halleck thought. Those are truths that you learn in high school and in college. Maybe you get it from your sorority sisters, or maybe it just comes, like a shortwave transmission from outer space. Not our kind, dear. Stay away.

'Good night, Daddy.'

'Good night, Lin.'

He had kissed her again, and left.

Rain, driven by a sudden strong gust of wind, slatted against his study window, and Halleck awoke as if from a doze. Not our kind, dear, he thought again, and actually laughed in the silence. The sound made him afraid, because only loonies laughed in an empty room. Loonies did that all the time; it was what made them loony.

Not our kind.

If he had never believed it before, he believed it now.

Now that he was thi

Halleck watched as Houston's nurse drew one-two-three ampoules of blood from his left arm and put them into a earner like eggs in a carton. Earlier, Houston had given him three stool cards and told him to mail them in. Halleck pocketed them glumly and then bent over for the proctological, dreading the humiliation of it, as always, more than the minor discomfort. That feeling of being invaded. Fullness.

'Relax,' Houston said, snapping on the thin rubber glove. 'As long as you can't feel both of my hands on your shoulders, you're all right.'

He laughed heartily.

Halleck closed his eyes.

Houston saw him two days later – he had, he said, seen to it that his bloodwork was given priority. Halleck sat down in the denlike room (pictures of clipper ships on the walls, deep leather chairs, deep-pile gray rug) where Houston did his consulting. His heart was hammering hard, and he felt droplets of cold sweat nestled at each temple. I'm not going to cry in front of a man that tells nigger jokes, he told himself with fierce grimness, and not for the first time. If I have to cry, I'll drive out of town and park the car and do it.

'Everything looks fine,' Houston said mildly.

Halleck blinked. The fear had by now rooted deep enough so that he was positive he had misheard Houston. 'What?'

'Everything looks fine,' Houston repeated. 'We can do some more tests if you want, Billy, but I don't see the point right now. Your blood looks better than it has at your last two physicals, as a matter of fact. Cholesterol is down, same with the triglycerides. You've lost some more weight – the nurse got you at two-seventeen this morning – but what can I say? You're still almost thirty pounds over your optimum weight, and I don't want you to lose sight of that, but . He gri

'I don't have one,' Halleck said. He felt both confused and tremendously relieved – the way he had felt on a couple of occasions in college when he had passed tests for which he was unprepared.

'We'll hold judgment in abeyance until we get the results on your Hayman-Reichling Series.'

'My what?'

'The shit cards,' Houston said, and then laughed heartily. 'Something might show up there, but really, Billy, the lab ran twenty-three different tests on your blood, and they all look good. That's persuasive.'

Halleck let out a long, shaky sigh. 'I was scared,' he said.

'It's the people who aren't who die young,' Houston replied. He opened his desk drawer and took out a bottle with a small spoon dangling from the cap by a chain. The spoon's handle, Halleck saw, was in the shape of the Statue of Liberty. 'Tootsweet?'

Halleck shook his head. He was content, however, to sit where he was, with his hands faced together on his belly – on his diminished belly – and watch as Fairview's most successful family practitioner snorted coke first up one nostril and then up the other. He put the little bottle back in his desk and took out another bottle and package of Q-tips. He dipped a Q-tip in the bottle and then rammed it up his nose.