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Playing it cool and living it warm, you know …”
    â€œQuit dreaming, Petey,” she said irritably. But he had stripped his back to his undershirt and had started to move records into record cabinets. He stopped to say, “How about me putting up the Venetian blinds?” Then she softened and offered one kindness: “Peter, you’re the one who really looks wonderful. You look just—well—healthy.”
    â€œI take care of myself, Anna. That’s why. Vegetables, high proteins. I’m not the night owl I was. Grapefruits, sunlight, oh sunlight, that’s my dear love now.”
    â€œYou always did take care of yourself, Peter.”
    â€œNo, Anna, this is different.” He stopped and settled on a box of curtains. “I mean it’s not egocentric and selfish, the way I used to be. Now it has a real philosophical basis. Don’t mix me up with biology. Look at me, what do you see?”
    Anna had read that cannibals, tasting man, saw him thereafter as the great pig, the pale pink roast.
    â€œPeter, Peter, pumpkin eater,” Anna said.
    â€œAh no, that’s not what I mean. You know what you see? A structure of flesh. You know when it hit me? About two years ago, around the time we were breaking up, you and me. I took my grandpa to the bathroom one time when I was over there visiting—you remember him, Anna, that old jerk, the one that was so mad, he didn’t want to die … I was leaning on the door; he was sitting on the pot concentrating on his guts. Just to make conversation—I thought it’d help him relax—I said, ‘Pop? Pop, if you had it all to do over again, what would you do different? Any real hot tips?’
    â€œHe came up with an answer right away. ‘Peter,’ he said, ‘I’d go to a gym every goddamn day of my life; the hell with the job, the hell with the women. Peter, I’d build my body up till God Hisself wouldn’t know how to tear it apart. Look at me Peter,’ he said. ‘I been a mean sonofabitch the last fifteen years. Why? I’ll tell you why. This structure, this … this thing’—he pinched himself across his stomach and his knees—’this me’—he cracked himself sidewise across his jaw—’this is got to be maintained. The reason is, Peter:
It is the dwelling place of the soul.
In the end, long life is the reward, strength, and beauty.’ “
    â€œOh, Peter!” said Anna. “Are you working?”
    â€œMan,” said Peter, “you got the same itsy-bitsy motivations. Of course I’m working. How the hell do you think I live? Did you get your eight-fifty a week out in Scroungeville or not?”
    â€œEight-fifty is right.”
    â€œO.K., O.K. Then listen. I have a vitamin compound that costs me twelve-eighty a hundred. Fifty dollars a year for basic maintenance and repair.”
    â€œDid the old guy die?”
    â€œMother! Yes! Of course he died.”
    â€œI’m sorry. He wasn’t so bad. He liked Judy.”
    â€œBad or good, Anna, he got his time in, he lived long enough to teach the next generation. By the way, I don’t think you’ve put on an ounce.”
    â€œThanks.”
    â€œAnd the kid looks great. You do take good care of her. You were always a good mother. I’ll bet you broil her stuff and all.”
    â€œSometimes,” she said.
    â€œLet her live in the air,” said Peter. “I bet you do. Let her love her body.”
    â€œLet her,” said Anna sadly.
    â€œTo work, to work, where strike committees shirk,” sang Peter. “
Is
the ladder in the cellar?”
    â€œNo, no, in that kitchen closet. The real tall closet.”
    Then Peter put up the Venetian blinds, followed by curtains. He distributed books among the available bookcases. He glued the second drawer of Judy’s bureau. Although all the furniture had not been installed, there were shelves for