From the Corner of His Eye

make a vein swell more visibly, and the sting had been the prick of a hypodermic needle.
        They would have given him an antinausea medication. It most likely wasn't going to work quickly enough to save him.
        He thought he heard the soft swoosh of knife-edge wings slicing the January air. He dared not look up. More in his throat. The agony. Darkness poured into his head, as if it were blood rising relentlessly from his flooded stomach and esophagus.

Chapter 8
        
        HAVING COMPLETED HER English lesson, Maria Elena Gonzalez went home with a plastic shopping bag full of precisely damaged clothes and a smaller, paper bag containing cherry muffins for her two girls.
        When she closed the front door and turned away from it, Agnes bumped her swollen belly into Joey. His eyebrows shot up, and he put his hands on her distended abdomen, as if she were more fragile than a robin's egg and more valuable than one by Faberge.
        "Now?" he asked.
        "I'd like to tidy up the kitchen first."
        Pleadingly: "Aggie, no."
        He reminded her of the Worry Bear from a book she'd already IL bought for her baby's collection.
        The Worry Bear carries worries in his pockets. Under his Panama hat and in two gold lockets. Carries worries on his back and under his arms. Nevertheless, dear old Worry Bear has his charms.
        Agnes's contractions were getting more frequent and slightly more severe, so she said, "All right, but let me go tell Edom and Jacob that we're leaving."
        Edom and Jacob Isaacson were her older brothers, who lived in two small apartments above the four-car garage at the back of the property.
        "I've already told them," Joey said, wheeling away from her and yanking open the door of the foyer closet with such force that she thought he would tear it off its hinges.
        He produced her coat as if by legerdemain. Magically, she found her arms in the sleeves and the collar around her neck, though given her size lately, putting on anything other than a hat usually required strategy and persistence.
        When she turned to him again, he had already slipped into his jacket and snatched the car keys off the foyer table. He put his left hand under her right arm, as though Agnes were feeble and in need of sup- port, and he swept her through the door, onto the front porch.
        He didn't pause to lock the house behind them. Bright Beach, in 1965, was as free of criminals as it was untroubled by lumbering brontosaurs.
        The afternoon was winding down, and the lowering sky seemed to be drawn steadily toward the earth by threads of gray light that reeled westward, ever faster, over the horizon's spool. The air smelled like rain waiting to happen.
        The beetle-green Pontiac waited in the driveway, with a shine that tempted nature to throw around some bad weather. Joey always kept a spotless car, and he probably wouldn't have had time to earn a living if he had resided in some shine-spoiling climate rather than in southern California.
        "Are you all right?" he asked as he opened the passenger's door and helped her into the car.
        "Right as rain."
        You're sure"
        "Good as gold."
        The inside of the Pontiac smelled pleasantly of lemons, though the rearview mirror was not hung with one of those tacky decorative deodorizers. The seats, regularly treated with leather soap, were softer and more supple than they had been when the car had shipped out of Detroit, and the instrument panel sparkled.
        As Joey opened the driver's door and got in behind the steering wheel, he said, "Okay?"
        "Fine as silk."
        "You look pale."
        "Fit as a fiddle."
        "You're mocking me, aren't you?"
        "You beg so sweetly to be mocked, how could I possibly withhold it from you?"
        Just as Joey pulled his door shut, a contraction gripped Agnes. She grimaced, sucking air sharply between her clenched teeth.
        "Oh, no," said the Worry Bear. "Oh, no."
        "Good heavens, sweetie, relax. This isn't ordinary pain. This is happy pain. Our little girl's going to be with us before the day is done."
        "Little boy."
        "Trust a mother's intuition."
        "A father's got some, too." He was so nervous that the key rattled interminably against the ignition plate before, at last, he was able to insert it. "Should be a boy, because then you'll always have a man around the