“I wondered if they got to enjoy being normal, to know just how terrific it was, or whether it was just invisible to them like air?”

“I always liked that time of day, when people were shutting up their shops, putting the town to bed for the night, going home to do normal stuff with their normal families. I wonder if they got to enjoy being normal, to know just how terrific it was, or whether it was just invisible to them like air? Sometimes I got so pissed off at how easy the normal people had it that I just wanted to walk down the street shaking them and screaming into their squishy self-satisfied faces.”

“I looked at the people playing, walking, loafing, hurrying, or sauntering across the little park in front of us. How many terrible stories were there, just there in front of me, never to be spoken?”

“So we fell asleep holding hands. If married couples got to do this all the time, shit if I could understand how there were ever divorces, or even fights.”

“I would take it as a personal favor if you would use the term Ambient Temperature Risen American.”“Ha, ha, ha.” He saw that Reagan was not smiling. “Ah, of course, anyway, I just wanted to say that many of my close friends are at ambient temperature, in fact many of them have become estates, which I think we have to learn to think of as they are every bit as much a person as any corporation, or any other corporation if the estate happens to be incorporated or own a corporation, because we have to think about that. And I want you to know that I can identify very strongly with that, because, in fact, many of my ancestors are ambient temperature also, as I know from having attended their baptisms.”

“Slow down, and enjoy that stuff if it’s possible. Kathy doesn’t care what time I leave, only what time I clock out, and she knows sometimes I sleep here when I’m locked out, or have friends over. Everything’s cool as long as I clock out on time.”She swallowed that big bite she’d rammed in, and said, “Okay. Jeez, I’m so hungry, this stuff is good.”Ketchup for your fries, miss? I can recommend it—it’s my main source of vitamin C.”She smiled. “Sure. What does Kathy do if you clock out late?”Well, a couple times I’ve fallen asleep and done it, and gotten off with a warning. Eventually, though, if I made a habit of it, I’d disappear in the middle of the night, and never be seen again, and the only clues the police would have would be a few orange hairs and some enormous shoe prints. But for a few weeks afterward, all over the country, the Quarter Pounders would taste just a little bit more like Lightsburg, Ohio.”

“And once Father Lucas said to me, 'Be simple, Matthew, life is a simple book, and an open book, read and be simple as the beasts in the field; just being miserable isn't enough -- you've got to know how.' So I got to thinking and I said to myself, 'This is a terrible thing that Father Lucas has put on me -- be simple like the beasts and yet think and harm nobody.”