Back in the kitchen, he took out another beer

and, on a whim, looked to see if there was any food.

There was a Slim Jim smoked sausage in a cellophane wrapper and there was an egg on the rack. Good. A hard-boiled egg and a sausage. A man's breakfast

He cracked the egg on the edge of the counter. The gooey yolk and slimy white ran onto the counter.

"Craps," he hissed. Bobby Jack jumped back so that the egg didn't drip on his bare feet. He thought it had been hard-boiled. He remembered boiling some eggs just a day or so ago. Or maybe it was a week.

He held the Slim Jim in hisjrther hand. Well, tomorrow he would eat that because you couldn't eat a saloon sausage without an egg and there were no more eggs in the house.

He took out another beer and counted the remaining cans. Only a dozen. He'd have more delivered. He slammed the refrigerator door shut. He opened the can and took a swallow. As he leaned forward to toss the pop-top toward the garbage can, he stepped into the raw egg which had slimed its way to the floor.

"Craps," he said. He could see it was going to be another one of those days.

He walked toward the front door with the beer can in his hand. The New York Times was just inside the front door. He should read it, he knew. At least glance at its editorial page. But who cared? He knew what it would say. It would criticize him, criticize the Arabs, criticize his brother-in-law, praise the Jews and come out for abortion and

against capital punishment, and frankly the New York Times was getting to be a pain in the ass. What could you expect from a newspaper that was a tool of the international Zionist conspiracy?