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437 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1981
The sun scorches the sky as if it were newly created, as if it were flexing its muscle, hammering out the first link in a chain of megatonic nuclear events, flaring up with all the confidence of youth and all the promise of eternal combustion. Which is to say it is hot. Damnably hot. And as quiet as the surface of some uninhabitable and forbidden planet.
Experience has taught Ned Rise a good many things – nearly all of them unpleasant. One thing it has taught him is to keep his assets liquid. Another is to wear a life jacket if you’re expecting heavy seas. He has also come to understand that the prudent homme des affaires never removes his shoes, keeps one eye propped open in repose, and never under any circumstances allows himself to enter a room with only one door.
…he glances up from his eggs and drippings to scan the ruddy faces and long noses at the bar, pregnant with his secret, savoring the quiet incubation of his celebrity. If they only knew. He stifles a sudden impulse to shout it out, dance on the tables, set it to music and sing it to them, emblazon it on great drooping banners like bellying sails…