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never shown him any real love and he had always fought with his sister.
In effect he was alone in the world. Sometimes he felt sorry for himself
and drank himself into a stupor but most often he was sober and got
through the day without doing any damage to himself or others. When
he drank in company he sometimes became expansive and convivial, talking
about the things he'd seen like a seasoned traveler and people listened
and told him he'd had an interesting life and he'd say, "Yeah, that's
for sure," and tip back his drink in a cocky way and get a nice lift
for a moment or two before he came crashing down again. He'd used
drugs for a while and that had given him a lift too but he was clean
now, he'd known it could kill him and had taken himself in hand right
after he broke up with that woman and preferred to drink, which was
cheaper, though he knew that that could kill him too. When he'd gotten
out of jail he'd checked into a cheap hotel and lay on the bed smoking
and staring at the ceiling
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where
the neon lights from across the streets kept blinking on and off and
made patterns like the bars on a prison wall and he went downstairs
and found a whore and felt better than he'd felt in years. But the
good feeling hadn't lasted a day. It never did. He'd had these few
good days in his life and the rest had been like prison days or shipboard
days or days in the greasy spoon. He was just punching in and punching
out now. All his dreams were like wads of crumpled paper.
Charlie's boy was studying business administration
at the community college and the girl had gotten a job in Walgreen's
and neither of them was around a lot. The girl had a boyfriend too,
a gangling, pimply type who looked like he had hayseed in his hair
but it turned out he had a basketball scholarship at the University
though he wasn't a starter or anything and the girl went to every
game and both Charlie and Ginny started watching the telecasts looking
for him on the bench and the girl in the stands and
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