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He had a lot of trouble talking to people. Sometimes he wished that people were transmissions. Then he would be able to get along with them better. His sons looked very grim, sitting there. They had forgotten to shave that morning. They had always been very clean in their appearance and shaved every day before the bowling trophies had been stolen.
    Since then their appearance had started downhill and would continue to travel in that direction until they ended up looking very seedy and disrespectable, the kind of men that made honest people very nervous when they saw them.
    “I guess you boys are going after the bowling trophies,” their father said.
    The brothers nodded.
    “Well, good luck,” their father said and walked back into the garage to a waiting transmission.
    The Logan brothers drove off.

Greta Garbo and Willard
    Three years later in San Francisco, Patricia said to John after they had just come back from a movie, “Do you think Greta Garbo would like Willard?”
    They were sitting on the couch, drinking glasses of cold white wine in the room where Willard reigned with his bowling trophies. Sometimes the expression on Willard’s face was different. He looked slightly apprehensive now as if something were going to happen that he did not like.
    The ability of Willard’s face to change had something to do with the way the artist had created Willard after waking from his dream.
    Willard was a kind of bird Mona Lisa .
    “Maybe,” John said. “You can’t tell. Willard is an acquired taste.”
    “I think Greta Garbo would like Willard,” Pat said.
    Pat and John did not notice the look of apprehension on Willard’s face. They were enjoying their wine and thinking about other things, so to them Willard was just good old Willard and his bowling trophies.
    “How old is Greta Garbo?” John asked.
    “I think she’s sixty-eight,” Pat said. “I may be wrong. She may be a little older or a little younger but she’s somewhere in her sixties.”
    “How old is Willard?” John said.
    “I don’t know. Three or four years,” Pat said.
    “Don’t you think Greta Garbo is a little old for Willard?” John said.
    “No, I think they’d be good friends.”
    “Greta Garbo is a loner,” John said. “Remember that. And Willard is very fond of his bowling trophies.”
    “That cannot be denied,” Pat said.

The game is over
    “John and Pat are back from the movie,” Constance said. She had finished her sandwich and was now getting dressed. Bob had stopped reading from the Greek Anthology and was sitting on the bed, watching her. He liked to watch her get dressed. He hadn’t started to put any clothes on yet.
    “How do you know?” he said.
    “I can hear them moving around downstairs,” Constance said.
    Patricia and John always made a lot of noise when they first entered their apartment and the noise travelled up through the floor. The noise was very easy to hear. Bob just wasn’t listening any more. Before he got the warts in his penis he used to complain about it all the time, “They’re nice people but why are they so God-damn noisy!” Now he didn’t say anything about it.
    “They went to see a Greta Garbo movie,” Constance said, slipping a dress over her head. “They’re big Greta Garbo fans.”
    “What?” Bob said.
    “That was a good sandwich,” Constance said.
    “You look very pretty,” Bob said.
    She did, too.
    ‘Thank you,” Constance said and tossed her head, causing her long blonde hair to fall across her shoulder. She walked over to the dresser and got a brush and started to brush her hair in the mirror.
    The dress had short sleeves. The rope marks were visible on her wrists. They were red and slightly weltish. They looked very incongruous.
    Bob put his clothes on.
    Then he picked up the ropes that were lying on the bed. He took the ropes and put them in a hall closet on a shelf. Actually, he was hiding them under a blanket that was on the shelf. He was ashamed of them but he