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"Thank the good Lord! I dreamed you was dead!"

"Not that I know of."

"I dreamed the angels had come down from the sky, and carried you up, and set you down next to Sweet Jesus Himself."

"No," said Eliot fuzzily. "Nothing like that happened."

"It'll happen sometime. And the weeping and wailing in this town, you'll hear it up there."

Eliot hoped he wouldn't hear the weeping and wailing up there, but he didn't say so.

"Even though you're not dying, Mr. Rosewater, I know you'll never come back here. You'll get up there to Indianapolis, with all the excitement and lights and beautiful buildings, and you'll get a taste of the high life again, and you'll hunger for more of it, which is only natural for anybody who's ever tasted the high life the way you have, and the next thing you know you'll be in New York, living the very highest life there is. And why shouldn't you?"

"Mr. Peach—" and Eliot rubbed his eyes, "if I were to somehow wind up in New York, and start living the highest of all possible lives again, you know what would happen to me? The minute I got near any navigable body of water, a bolt of lightning would knock me into the water, a whale would swallow me up, and the whale would swim down to the Gulf of Mexico and up the Mississippi, up the Ohio, up the Wabash, up the White, up Lost River, up Rosewater Creek. And that whale would jump from the creek into the Rosewater Inter-State Ship Canal, and it would swim down the canal to this city, and spit me out in the Parthenon. And there I'd be."

"Whether you're coming back or not, Mr. Rosewater, I want to make you a present of some good news to take with you."

"And what news is that, Mr. Peach?"

"As of ten minutes ago, I swore off liquor forever. That's my present to you."

Eliot's red telephone rang. He lunged at it, for it was the fire department's hot line. "Hello!" He folded all the fingers of his left hand, except for the middle one. The gesture was not obscene. He was readying the finger that would punch the red button, that would make the doomsday horn on top of the firehouse bawl.

"Mr. Rosewater?" It was a woman's voice, and it was so coy.

"Yes! Yes!" Eliot was hopping up and down. "Where's the fire?"

"It's in my heart, Mr. Rosewater."

Eliot was enraged, and no one would have been surprised to see him so. He was famous for his hatred of skylarking where the fire department was concerned. It was the only thing he hated. He recognized the caller, who was Mary Moody, the slut whose twins he had baptized the day before. She was a suspected arsonist, a convicted shoplifter, and a five-dollar whore. Eliot blasted her for using the hot line.

"God damn you for calling this number! You should go to jail and rot! Stupid sons of bitches who make personal calls on a fire department line should go to hell and fry forever!" He slammed the receiver down.

A few seconds later, the black telephone rang. "This is the Rosewater Foundation," said Eliot sweetly. "How can we help you?"

"Mr. Rosewater—this is Mary Moody again." She was sobbing.

"What on earth is the trouble, dear?" He honestly didn't know. He was ready to kill whoever had made her cry.

A chauffeur-driven black Chrysler Imperial pulled to the curb below Eliot's two windows. The chauffeur opened the back door. His old joints giving him pain, out came Senator Lister Ames Rosewater of Indiana. He was not expected.

He went creakingly upstairs. This abject mode of progress had not been his style in times past. He had aged shockingly, wished to demonstrate that he had aged shockingly. He did what few visitors ever did, knocked on Eliot's office door, asked if it would be all right if he came in. Eliot, who was still in his fragrant war-surplus long Johns, hurried to his father, embraced him.

"Father, Father, Father—what a wonderful surprise. "

"It isn't easy for me to come here."

"I hope that isn't because you think you're not welcome."

"I can't stand the sight of this mess."

"It's certainly a lot better than it was a week