"I'm going to push him. Where do you think he'll want to sit?" Teddy's mood was very up.

"Teddy, he's too sick for that." Cassie jumped out of the car. Mitch wasn't joining the family.

"Oh, come on. Pop the trunk, Mom. I want to push him."

She couldn't believe they were having this discussion. The man had just come out of intensive care. She wasn't going to have him drooling in the living room. She popped the trunk.

"We're going to put Daddy to bed, Teddy."

"Oh, do we have to?" Teddy pulled the wheelchair out, then struggled, trying to figure out how to get it open. "Ah, got it."

"Yes, we have to. He can't visit," Cassie insisted.

"But he needs stimulation, Mom."

"Fine, turn on the TV."

"There's no TV in that room. Hey, this is neat." Teddy experimented with the wheelchair, rolling it this way and that, not so easily on the gravel. "I'm sure Daddy will like this."

"Daddy's a vegetable," Marsha chimed in, taking her mother's side for once.

"No, he's not. He winked at me yesterday."

"Teddy, he's a carrot."

Cassie put her hand to her splitting headache. Her kids were regressing again.

"Look, Mom, I'm an XKE." Teddy tipped the chair all the way back, making the rmmmm, rmmm sound of a sports car engine.

Just then Carol Carnahan appeared on the lawn with a casserole.

"Stop it, Teddy," Cassie hissed. She waved at Carol.

Carol hurried over and bestowed a careful kiss on Cassie's cheek. "The girls are organizing casseroles for you, honey. For the next ten days, at least. Then we'll see how it goes. After all you've put up with over the years, you deserve it."

"What?" Cassie's cheeks burned.

"Tonight's tuna noodle. I made it myself, with fresh tuna instead of canned. How's he doing?"

Cassie shook her head. "Carol, that's so nice of you."

"Hi, Daddy," Lorraine burbled loudly as the gurney with Mitch strapped on it was lifted out of the ambulance. "Remember me? I'm Lorraine."

An hour later, Mitch was settled in his room. Cassie, Marsha, and Aunt Edith were sitting on the patio, bucking themselves up with unbelievably velvety Château Petrus '45 from the cellar. And Teddy and Lorraine were in the pool, bobbing around in neon inner tubes. Lorraine was in the pink one. Teddy was in the purple one, each chugging beer from a can. Every few minutes, not looking a bit like Venus emerging from her scallop shell, Lorraine got out of the pool in her pink bikini to check on the patient. Fifteen minutes, like clockwork. She was a very responsible girl. Edith was enchanted by her professionalism and weight.

"Isn't it wonderful that Teddy found himself such a lovely, normal kind of girl?" she remarked.

"Wonderful," Cassie said, rather pleased with herself. This was the first time she'd ever taken a single bottle from Mitch's cellar without his express permission. He didn't approve of her drinking, and now she knew why. Wine eased her anxiety, let her be warm and giggly. She didn't think it was so bad to take the rare Pomerol, because even though it was a special Bordeaux, one of the wine auctions' particular darlings because there was so little of it around, Pomerols weren't classed among the great red wines of Bordeaux, like the Château Latour, Château Margaux, Château Haut-Brion, Château Lafite-Rothchild, etc., etc., etc., not in 1855, when quality control was first established in France, or in 1973, like Château Mouton-Rothchild, the only new addition ever made. So the Pomerol was not better than the best, really, by objective standards. Still, it was earthy and deep and almost mystical in the way it made her think about burgeoning cocks, specifically Charlie Schwab's. The first bottle disappeared quickly, and she went down into the cellar for a few more.

After a while a pretty tipsy Marsha got up to dress for her date with Tom Wellfleet. By eight o'clock the two of them had left for dinner at L'Endroit. After Edith and Cassie and Teddy and Lorraine finished Carol Carnahan's tuna noodle casserole, Teddy ordered several take-out pizzas. They ate them in the kitchen while Cassie drove Edith home. When she returned forty minutes later, she noted that the two of them were fooling around outside on one of the deck chairs. Totally sober now, she went into the makeshift hospital room to check on Mitch.

He was raised up slightly in the hospital bed, resting against two down pillows. The lights were on, clearly illuminating his thin hair, very long now and white at the roots. His stubbly cheeks that hadn't been relieved of his grizzled beard in many weeks. His open mouth was blowing bubbles. She could see his yellow teeth and wet chin. As in the hospital all month, he didn't register her presence now. But unlike all those other times, tonight she had no interest in getting his attention. She studied him coldly, watching his chest heave as he breathed noisily on his own. Apparently it wasn't so easy staying alive. He was struggling. Stubborn bastard.

She noted that Lorraine had dressed him in a pair of his own expensive Sulka pajamas and had made an attempt to neaten his hair. He smelled as if he needed a diaper change, but despite what Edith said, Cassie's contract didn't call for such a service.

"I'm going upstairs now," she told him solemnly. "I'm going to drink a whole bottle of '89 Domaine Romanee-Conti all by myself. I know for you it wouldn't be ready. But my sources say the Grands Echezeaux is about perfect now-spicy, firm, with a taste of berries, minerals, and oak. In California, they may cheat and add too much oak-‘oaky, oaky,' as you would say-in the Cabernets and Merlots to enhance mediocre grapes. But not in France, right, Mitch?" She paused for a breath, then went on.

"Listen, if you have to stay here for any length of time, I swear to God that I'm going to start dating. I'm going to have sex whenever I want it, wherever I want it. I'm going to drink this cellar down to nothing. I'm going to travel, and I'm going to leave you with a nurse. When I'm here, I'm going to dust you like a piece of furniture. And when I go out, I'm going to leave you in your wheelchair facing the wall. Welcome home, you son of a bitch."

MITCH MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE HEARD HER, may or may not have registered what she said. But the rest of his evening didn't go well. At two in the morning Teddy and Lorraine were necking out by the pool. They'd turned off the lights outside so no one could watch them, but they could easily see the glow from the soft light in the office, where Mitch's hospital bed had been cranked down so he could go to sleep. Lorraine had wanted to turn that light off, too, but Teddy had wanted it on so his dad wouldn't feel disoriented if he woke up in the middle of the night.

"Do you think he knows he's home?" Teddy wondered.

"Of course, honey, don't you worry; he's happy as a clam."

They were lying on a single chaise and it wasn't easy to stay balanced. Teddy was skinny and rested on one hip. Lorraine was tilted toward his chest, her breasts straining to free themselves from the bikini top that barely covered her nipples.

"Kiss my neck, honey," she said.

Teddy leaned forward and touched his lips to Lorraine's floral-scented shoulder. It was soft and round, and damp from the swim they'd taken. He was in terrible pain from all the time she was taking to warm up, and wanted to move along down to the business end of the operation.

"That's nice, a little higher. Okay, that's good, just like that." She threw her head back and received his kisses on her neck where she wanted them. "Like butterflies, that's right."

His arm was draped over her hips and he felt the wonderful curves of her belly, overflowing from the binding band of her tight bikini bottom. All around was the roll he loved to squeeze. But he wanted it all to spill out. He wanted in there, where he knew it was going to be heaven. He pretended some innocent roaming, then began to inch his fingers inside the band.