She was back in her room at seven-thirty. She undressed, put on a robe, and sat looking out the fourth-story window. In spite of its name, Cityscape Hotel was actually far out on Bangor's outskirts. The view Anne looked out on was, except for the lights in the small parking lot, one of almost unalloyed darkness. That was exactly the sort of view she liked.

There were amphetamine capsules in her purse. Anne took one of them out, opened it, poured the white powder onto the mirror of her compact, made a line with one sensibly short nail, and snorted half of it. Her heart immediately began to jackrabbit in her narrow chest. A flush of color bloomed in her pallid face. She left the rest for the morning. She had begun to use yellowjackets this way shortly after her father's first stroke. Now she found she could not sleep without a snort of this stuff, which was the diametric opposite of a sedative. When she had been a little girl-a very little girl-her mother had once cried at Anne in utter exasperation, “You're so contrary cheese'd physic ya!”

Anne supposed it had been true then, and that it was true now… not that her mother would ever dare say it now, of course.

Anne glanced at the phone and then away. Just looking at it made her think of Bobbi, of the way she had refused to come to Father's funeral-not in words but in a cowardly way that was typical of her, by simply refusing to respond to Anne's increasingly urgent efforts to communicate with her She had called twice during the twenty-four hours following the old bastard's stroke, when it became obvious he was going to snuff it. The phone had not been answered either time.

She called again after her father died-this time at 1:04 on the morning of August 2nd. Some drunk had answered the telephone.

“I'd like Roberta Anderson, please,” Anne said. She stood stiffly at the pay phone in the lobby of Utica Soldiers” Hospital. Her mother sat in a nearby plastic chair, surrounded by endless brothers and endless sisters with their endless Irish potato faces, weeping and weeping and weeping. “Right now.”

“Bobbi?” the drunk voice at the other end said. “You want the old boss or the New and Improved Boss?”

“Spare me the bullshit, Gardener. Her father has

“Can't talk to Bobbi now,” the drunk-it was Gardener, all right, she recognized the voice now-broke in. Anne closed her eyes. There was only one piece of phone-related bad manners she hated worse than being broken in upon. “She's out in the shed with the Dallas Police. They're all getting even Newer and more Improved.”

“You tell her her sister Anne -

Click!

Dry rage turned the sides of her throat to heated flannel. She held the telephone handset away from her and looked at it the way a woman might look at a snake that has bitten her. Her fingernails were white-going-on-purple.

The piece of phone-related bad manners she hated most was being hung up on.

She had dialed back at once, but this time, after a long pause, the telephone began to make a weird sirening noise in her ear. She hung up and went over to her weeping mother and her harp relatives.

“Did you get her, Sissy?” her mother asked Anne.

“Yes.”

“What did she say?” Her eyes begged Anne for good news. “Did she say she'd come home for the funeral?”

“I couldn't get a commitment one way or another,” Anne said, and suddenly all of her fury at Roberta, Roberta who had had the temerity to try and escape, suddenly burst out of her heart-but not in shrillness. Anne would never be still or shrill. That sharklike grin surfaced on her face. The murmuring relatives grew silent and looked at Anne uneasily. Two of the old ladies gripped their rosaries. “She did say that she was glad the old bastard was dead. Then she laughed. Then she hung up.”

There was a moment of stunned silence. Then Paula Anderson clapped her hands to her ears and began to shriek.

Anne had had no doubt-at least at first-that Bobbi would be at the funeral. Anne meant for her to be there, and so she would be. Anne always got what she wanted; that made the world nice for her, and that was the way things should be. When Roberta did come, she would be confronted with the lie Anne had told-probably not by their mother, who would be too pathetically glad to see her to mention it (or probably even to remember it), but surely by one of the harp uncles. Bobbi would deny it, so the harp uncle would probably let it go-unless the harp uncle happened to be very drunk which was always a good possibility with Mama's brothers-but they would all remember Anne's statement, not Bobbi's denial.

That was good. Fine, in fact. But not enough. It was time-overtime-that Roberta came home. Not just for the funeral; for good.

She would see to it. Leave it to Sissy.

Sleep did not come easy to Anne that night in the Cityscape. Part of it was being in a strange bed; part of it was the dim gabble of TVs from other rooms and the sense of being surrounded by other people, just another bee trying to sleep in just another chamber of this hive where the chambers were square instead of hexagonal; part of it was knowing that tomorrow would be an extremely busy day; most of it, however, was her continuing dull fury at being balked. It was the thing which she hated above all others-it reduced such annoyances as being hung up on to minor piffles. Bobbi had balked her. So far she had balked her utterly and completely, necessitating this stupid trip during what the weather forecasters were calling the worst heatwave to hit New England since 1974.

An hour after her lie about Bobbi to her mother and the harp aunts and uncles, she had tried the phone again, this time from the undertaker's (her mother had long since tottered home, where Anne supposed she would be sitting up with her cunt of a sister Betty, the two of them drinking that shitty claret they liked, wailing over the dead man while they got slopped). She got nothing but that sirening sound again. She called the operator and reported trouble on the line.

“I want you to check it, locate the trouble, and see that it's corrected,” Anne said. “There's been a death in the family, and I need to reach my sister as soon as possible.”

“Yes, ma'am. If you'll give me the number you're calling from

“I'm calling from the undertaker's,” Anne said. “I'm going to pick out a coffin for my father and then go to bed. I'll call in the morning. Just make sure my call goes through then, honey.”

She hung up and turned to the undertaker.

“Pine box,” she said. “Cheapest one you've got.”

“But, Ms Anderson, I'm sure you'll want to think about

“I don't want to think about anything,” Anne barked. She could feel the warning pulses which signaled the onset of one of her frequent migraine headaches. “Just sell me the cheapest pine box you've got so I can get the fuck out of here. It smells dead.”

“But…” The undertaker was entirely flabbergasted now. “But won't you want to see…”

“I'll see it when he's wearing it,” Anne said, drawing her checkbook out of her purse. “How much?”

The next morning Bobbi's telephone was working, but there was no answer. There continued to be no answer all day. Anne grew steadily more angry. Around four P. m., with the wake in the next room going full-blast, she had called Maine directory assistance and told the operator she wanted the number of the Haven Police Department.

“Well… there's no police department, exactly, but I have a listing for the Haven constable. Will that