right," Eddie said.

Eddie checked out at 7:15, when the night supervisor finally arrived. As he left the building, he noted that a burglar alarm down the street had gone off; probably because of a short circuit. The clanking set his nerves on edge. Apprehensively he felt a rising wind against his cheeks.

At home, he was greeted with a perfunctory kiss at the door.

"Honey," Lois told him, "you took the check book, and I didn't have any money."

"Something come up? I'm sorry."

"We're all out of milk. The milk man didn't come today. Their homogenizing machinery broke down. I phoned the dairy about nine; and then, of course, the phone has been on the blink since about eleven or a little before, so I couldn't ask you to bring some home."

"I kept trying to get you."

"I figured you had to work late again, when you weren't here at six, and I knew you'd be here when you got here."

Eddie sat down and she sat on the chair arm beside him. "How did it go today?"

He started to tell her about the wage cut and Ramon Lopez; but then he didn't want to talk about it. "So-so," he said. "There was an outage over in the Silver Lake Area just before I left."

"Fixed yet?"

"I doubt it," he said. "Probably a couple of more hours."

"Gee," she said, "when I think of all that meat in the deep freezer...."

"I wouldn't stock so much," he said. "I really wouldn't."

She twisted away from him. "Honey. I'm jittery. Something's ... I don't know. In the air, I guess."

The wind rattled the windows.

While Lois was warming dinner, his son came in.

"Hi, Eddie."

"Hi, Larry."

"Eddie, when we gonna get the TV fixed?"

Eddie put down the newspaper. "We just don't have a hundred dollars or so right now." He searched for matches on the table by the chair. "Lois, oh, Lois, where're the matches?"

She came in. "They were all out Friday at the store, and I keep forgetting to lay in a supply. Use my lighter over there."

"About the TV—"

Lois was wiping her hands on the paper towel she had brought with her. "Replacement parts are hard to find for the older sets," she said. "Anyway. I read today Channel Three finally went off the air. That leaves only Two and Seven. And the programs aren't any good, now, are they? All those commercials and all?"

"They do use a lot of old stuff I've already seen," the son admitted, "but every once in a while there's something new."

"Let's talk about it some other time, Larry, O.K.?" Eddie said. "How's that? It's almost your bed-time. Studies done?"

"All but the Library report."

"Well, finish it, and—"

"I got to read the book down there. Two classes assigned it and they don't have the copies to let us check out. And I want to ask you about something, Eddie."

"Daddy's tired. His dinner's on. Come on, Eddie. I'll set it right now. And Larry, you've already eaten...."

After dinner, Eddie got back to the paper, the evening Times. It was down to eight pages, mostly advertising. There was a front-page editorial reluctantly announcing a price increase.

"They raise the price once more, and we'll just quit taking it," Lois said. "You read about the airplane crash in Florida? Wasn't that terrible? What do you think caused it?"

"Metal fatigue, probably," Eddie said. "It was a twenty-year-old jet."

"The company said it wasn't that at all."

"They always do," Eddie said.

"I don't guess the payroll check came today or you'd have mentioned it."

"Payroll's still all balled up. Somebody pressed a wrong button on the new machine and some fifty thousand uncoded cards got scattered all over the office."

"Oh, no! What do the poor people, who don't have bank accounts, do?"

"Just wait, like we wait."

"You had a bad day," Lois said. "I can tell."

"No...." Eddie said. "Not really, I guess."

"Still working on Saturday?"

"I