"She's horrible, isn't she?" said the voice, and a great, thick hand appeared in his field of vision. He shook it tentatively, noting the heavy class ring and the thin, plain wedding band. He looked up slowly. Marci's father was short but powerfully built, like the wrestlers on the other kids' lunchboxes at school. He had a shock of curly black hair that was flecked with dandruff, and a thick bristling mustache that made him look very fierce, though his eyes were gentle and bookish behind thick glasses. He was wearing wool trousers and a cable-knit sweater that was unraveling at the elbows. "Pleased to meet you, Albert," he said. They shook hands gravely. "I've been after her to unpack those books since we moved here. You could come by tomorrow afternoon and help, if you'd like -- I think it's the only way I'll get herself to stir her lazy bottom to do some chores around here." "Oh, *Da*!" Marci said. "Who cooks around here? Who does the laundry?" "The take-away pizza man does the majority of the cooking, daughter. And as for laundry, the last time I checked, there were two weeks' worth of laundry to do." "Da," she said in a sweet voice, "I love you Da," she said, wrapping her arms around his trim waist. "You see what I have to put up with?" her father said, snatching her up and dangling her by her ankles. She flailed her arms about and made outraged choking noises while he swung her back and forth like a pendulum, releasing her at the top of one arc so that she flopped onto the sofa in a tangle of thin limbs. "It's a madhouse around here," her father continued as Marci righted herself, knocking Alan in the temple with a tennis shoe, "but what can you do? Once she's a little bigger, I can put her to work in the mines, and then I'll have a little peace around here." He sat down on an overstuffed armchair with a fussy antimacassar. "He's got a huge life-insurance policy," Marci said conspiratorially. "I'm just waiting for him to kick the bucket and then I'm going to retire." "Oh, aye," her father said. "Retire. Your life is an awful one, it is. Junior high is a terrible hardship, I know." Alan found himself grinning. "What's so funny?" Marci said, punching him in the shoulder. "You two are," he said, grabbing her arm and then digging his fingers into her tummy, doubling her over with tickles. # There were *twelve* boxes of books. The damp in the basement had softened the cartons to cottage-cheese mush, and the back covers of the bottom layer of paperbacks were soft as felt. To Alan, these seemed unremarkable -- all paper under the mountain looked like this after a week or two, even if Doug didn't get to it -- but Marci was heartbroken. "My books, my lovely books, they're roont!" she said, as they piled them on the living room carpet. "They're fine," Alan said. "They'll dry out a little wobbly, but they'll be fine. We'll just spread the damp ones out on the rug and shelve the rest."