that became the soft moist mechanisms of release.
Intentional misuse by deliberately inhaling contents can be harmful or fatal.
Erica wore a swirly blue skirt and buttercup blouse that happened to match the colors of their Fairlane.
Rick was still in the breezeway, running a shammy over the chrome-work. This was something, basically, he could do forever. He could look at himself in a strip of chrome, warp-eyed and hydrocephalic, and feel some of the power of the automobile, the horsepower, the decibel rumble of dual exhausts, the pedal tension of Ford-O-Matic drive. The sneaky thing about this car was that, yes, you drove it sensibly to the dentist and occasionally carpooled with the Andersons and took Eric to the science fair but beneath the routine family applications was the crouched power of the machine, top down, eating up the landscape.
Danger. Contents under pressure.
One of Erica's favorite words in the language was breezeway. It spoke of ease and breeze and being contemporary and having something others did not. Another word she loved was crisper. The Kel-vinator had a nice roomy crisper and she liked to tell the men that such-and-such was in the crisper. Not the refrigerator, the crisper. The carrots are in the crisper, Rick. There were people out there on the Old Farm Road, where the front porches sag badly and the grass goes unmowed and the Duck River Baptists worship in a squat building that sits in the weeds on the way to the dump, who didn't know what a crisper was, who had iceboxes instead of refrigerators, or who had refrigerators that lacked crispers, or who had crispers in their refrigerators but didn't know what they were for or what they were called, who put tubs of butter in the crisper instead of lettuce, or eggs instead of carrots.
He came in from the breezeway.
'The carrots are in the crisper, Rick.'
He liked to nibble on a raw carrot after he'd waxed and buffed the car.
He stood looking at the strontium white loaf that sat on a bed of lettuce inside a cake pan in the middle of the table.
'Wuffwhatisit?'
'It's my Jell-O chicken mousse!'
'Hey great,' he said.
Sometimes she called it her Jell-O chicken mousse and sometimes she called it her chicken mousse Jell-O. This was one of a thousand convenient things about Jell-O. The word went anywhere, front or back or in the middle. It was a push-button word, the way so many things were push-button now, the way the whole world opened behind a button that you pushed.
May cause discoloration of urine or feces.
Eric sidled along the wall and slipped into the bathroom, palming the sloppy condom. He washed it out in the sink and then fitted it over his middle finger and aimed the finger at his mouth so he could blow the condom dry. And in the movie version of his life he imagined how everything is projected on a CinemaScope screen, all the secret things he did alone over the years, and now that he is dead it's all available for public viewing and all his dead relatives and friends and teachers and ministers can watch him with his finger in his mouth, more or less, and a condom on his finger, and he is panting rhythmically to dry it off.
He heard his mother call his name.
He had to wash it and reuse it because this was the only one he had, borrowed from another boy, Danny Anderson, who'd taken it from his father's hiding place, under the balled socks, and who swore he'd never used it himself-a thing that wouldn't be fully established until both boys were dead and Eric had a chance to see the footage.
To avoid suffocation keep out of reach of small children.
Eric hid the rubber in his room, pressed into a box of playing cards. He took a long look at Jayne Mansfield's picture before he slipped it into the world atlas on his desk. He realized that Jayne's breasts were not as real- looking as he'd thought in his emotionally vulnerable state, dick in hand. They reminded him of something but what? And then he saw it. The bumper bullets on a Cadillac.
He went into the kitchen and opened the fridge, just to see what was going on in there. The bright colors, the product names and logos, the array of familiar shapes, the tinsel glitter of things in foil wrap, the general sense of benevolent gleam, of eyeball surprise, the sense of a tiny holiday taking place on the shelves and in the slots, a world unspoiled and ever renewable. But there was something else as well, faintly unnerving. The throb perhaps. Maybe it was the informational flow contained in that endless motorized throb. Open the great white vaultlike door and feel the cool breezelet of systems at work, converting current into power, talking to each other day and night across superhuman spaces, a thing he felt outside of, not yet attuned to, and it confused him just a bit.
Except their Kelvinator wasn't white of course. Not on the outside anyway. It was cameo rose and pearly dawn.
He looked inside. He saw the nine tilted parfait glasses and felt a little dizzy. He got disoriented sometimes by the tilted Jell-O desserts. It was as if a science-fiction force had entered the house and made some things askew while sparing others.
They sat down to dinner and Rick carved the mousse and doled out portions. They drank iced tea with a slice of lemon wedged to the rim of each glass, one of Erica's effortless extra touches.
Rick said to Eric, 'Wha'cha been up to all afternoon? Big homework day?'
'Hey dad. Saw you simonizing the car.'
'Got an idea. After dinner well take the binoculars and drive out on the Old Farm Road and see if we can spot it.'
'Spot what?' Erica said.
'The baby moon. What else? The satellite they put up there. Supposed to be visible on clear nights.'
It wasn't until this moment that Erica understood why her day had felt shadowed and ominous from the time she opened her eyes and stared at the mikado yellow walls with patina green fleecing. Yes, that satellite they put into orbit a few days ago. Rick took a scientific interest and wanted Eric to do the same. Sure, Rick was surprised and upset, just as she was, but he was willing to stand in a meadow somewhere and try to spot the object as it floated over. Erica felt a twisted sort of disappointment. It was theirs, not ours. It flew at an amazing rate of speed over the North Pole,
Rick said, 'What about it, Eric? Want to drive on out?'
'Hey dad. Ga, ga, ga, great.'
A pall fell over the table, displacing Erica's Sputnik funk. She thought Eric's occasional stuttering had something to do with the time he spent alone in his room. Hitting the books too hard, Rick thought. He was hitting something too hard but Erica tried not to form detailed images.
Do not puncture or incinerate.
The boy could sit in the family room and watch their super console TV, which was compatible with the knotty pine paneling, and he could anticipate the dialogue on every show. Newscasts, ball games, comedy hours. He did whatever voice the announcer or actor used, matching the words nearly seamlessly, and he never stuttered.
All the other kids ate Oreo cookies. Eric ate Hydrox cookies because the name sounded like rocket fuel.
One of her kitchen gloves was missing-she had many pairs-and she wanted to believe Eric had borrowed it for one of his chemistry assignments. But she was afraid to ask. And she didn't think she looked forward to getting it back.
Yesterday he'd dunked a Hydrox cookie in milk, held it dripping over the glass and said thickly, 'Is verry gud we poot Roosian moon in U.S. sky.'
Then he took a bite and swallowed.
The men went out to find the orbiting satellite. Erica cleared the table, put on her rubberoid gloves and began to do the dishes. Rick had kidded her about the gloves a number of times. The kitchen was equipped with an automatic dishwasher of course. But she felt compelled as a homemaker to do a preliminary round of handwashing and scouring because if you don't get every smidge of organic murk off the fork tines and out of the pans before you run the dishwasher, it could come back to haunt you in the morning.
Flush eyes with water and call physician at once.
And the gloves protected her from scalding water and the touch of food scraps. Erica loved her gloves. The
