Status Updates From Couples (Crest P1252)

Loss became real and leaden only later, in the afternoon. Walking along Divinity Street with an empty skull and aching loin muscles, he met Eddie Constantine, back from the ends of the world. Eddie was rarely in town anymore, and perhaps Carol had just filled him in on a month's worth of gossip, for he gleefully cried in greeting, "Hey, Piet! I hear you got caught with your hand in the honeypot!"

(...)
Pleased with his rebuttal, he waited to hear Angela agree, but she slammed the screen door. Outside, in sudden moist air, he stepped sideways into the pruned lilacs and was stabbed beneath an eye and wondered if he were drunk and thus so elated.

Downstairs, Piet, having poured himself one more bourbon, had grown cold beside the dying fire, bored and outraged. He tried to use his parka as a blanket, but it was too small. He tiptoed up the stairs, listened at his door, and tapped at Georgene's. He tested the lock. It gave. (...)

The front door was pushed open. Deftly Piet replaced the receiver and faced the hall as if he had been looking in the mirror. Nancy stood there, swaddled with snowy clothes. Her cheeks were aflame. Wide-eyed, she held out to him on one wet leather mitten what he took to be a snowball; but it was half-gray. It was a frozen bird with a gingery redhead and a black spot on its chest, a tree sparrow caught by the blizzard