convince himself that he was nuts, that it couldn't be what he thought it was, not in this hick town two hundred and fifty miles north of Boston. It was that emerging naif which had been shocked, of course; that part of him seemed to believe (or had until he had discovered the little bottles under the Kissing Bridge) that all those news stories about the cocaine epidemic had just been make-believe, no more real than a TV crime show or a jean-Claude Van Damme movie.
He felt a similar sensation of shock now.
"Harold said they wanted to 'run me up to Bangor' and show me the place," Lois was saying. "He never takes me for rides these days; he just runs me places. Like I'm an errand. They had lots of brochures, and when Harold gave Janet the nod, she whipped them Out so fast-"
"Whoa, slow down. What place? What brochures?"
"I'm sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself, aren't I? It's a place in Bangor called Riverview Estates."
Ralph knew the name; had gotten a brochure himself, as a matter of fact. One of those mass-mailing things, this one targeted at people sixty-five and over. He and McGovern had shared a laugh about it... but the laugh had been just a touch uneasy-like kids whistling past the graveyard, "Shit, Lois-that's a retirement home, isn't it?"
"No, sir!" she said, widening her eyes innocently. "That's what I said, but Harold and Janet set me straight. No, Ralph, Riverview Estates is a condominium development site for community-oriented senior citizens." When Harold said that I said, 'Is that so? Well, let me tell you both something-you can put a fruit pie from McDonald's in a sterling-silver chafing dish and call it a French tart, but it's still just a fruit pie from McDonald's, as far as I am concerned."
"When I said that, Harold started to sputter and get red in the face, but Jan just gave me that sweet little smile of hers, the one she saves up for special occasions because she knows it drives me crazy.
She says, Well, why don't we look at the brochures anyway, Mother Lois? You'll do that much, won't you, after we both took Personal Days from work and drove all the way down here to see you?"
"Like Derry was in the heart of Africa," Ralph muttered.
Lois took his hand and said something that made him laugh. "Oh, to her it is!"
"Was this before or after you found out Litchfield had tattled?"
Ralph asked. He used the same word Lois had on purpose; it seemed to fit this situation better than a fancier word or phrase would have done.
"Committed a breach of confidentiality" was far too dignified for this nasty bit of work. Litchfield had run and tattled, simple as that.
"Before. I thought I might as well look at the brochures; after all, they'd come forty miles, and it wouldn't exactly kill me. So I looked while they ate the food I'd fixed-there wasn't any that had to be scraped into the swill later on, either-and drank coffee.
"That's quite a place, that Riverview. They have their own medical staff on duty twenty-four hours a day, and their own kitchen.
When you move in they give you a complete physical and decide what you can have to eat. There's a Red Diet Plan, a Blue Diet Plan, a Green Diet Plan, and a Yellow Diet Plan. There were three or four other colors as well. I can't remember what all of them were, but Yellow is for diabetics and Blue is for fatties."
Ralph thought of eating three scientifically balanced meals a day for the rest of his life-no more sausage pizzas from Gambino's, no more Coffee Pot sandwiches, no more chiliburgers from Mexico Milt's-and found the prospect almost unbearably grim.
"Also," Lois said brightly, "they have a pneumatic-tube system that delivers your daily pills right to your kitchen. Isn't that a marvelous idea, Ralph?"
"I guess so," Ralph said.
"Oh, yes, it is. It's marvelous, the wave of the future.
There's a computer to oversee everything, and I bet it never has a decline in cognition. There's a special bus that takes the Riverview people to places of scenic or cultural interest twice a week, and it also takes them shopping. You have to take the bus, because Riverview people aren't allowed to have cars."
"Good idea," he said, giving her hand a little squeeze. "What are a few drunks on Saturday night compared to an old fogey with a slippery cognition on the loose in a Buick