Sandman Read Online Free

workbench—” she ground her hips like a pole dancer “—they’re putty in your hands.”
    Jenny laughed and gave Nina a poke.
    Grinning, Nina scanned the room with her sea-green eyes. “Now,” she said, “where’s that teenager of yours? I want her to show me some moves.”
    Kim was where Jenny had left her, staring out at the yard through the solarium windows. Nina crept up behind her and plucked off her headphones, startling her.
    “Hey, kid. Who shit in your Corn Flakes?”
    “Nina,” Kim said, instantly brightening. That was one of Nina’s great gifts; her arrival in any room lit it up like a sunburst.
    “I heard you can out-jive Jackie Wilson,” Nina said.
    “You heard right,” Kim said, playing along.
    “Care to prove it?”
    Kim stood, her beaming smile like the grille on a ’53 Buick. She pointed at the Wurlitzer. “Choose your weapon, plebe.”
    Nina strode over and punched in Bobby Day’s “Rock-in Robin”.
    Jenny picked up her cat and leaned in the solarium doorway, a vague unease coloring her contentment. The reason for this contradictory blend of feelings occurred to her as she watched her daughter and her best friend dance.
    Her house was only this happy when her husband wasn’t in it.
    * * *
    Kim left for Tracy’s house at six-thirty, Jenny watching her through the front window as she trudged down the street, tote bag slung over one round shoulder. Though Tracy wasn’t the kind of kid Jenny would have chosen for Kim to chum around with, she was the only friend Kim had. The two were about as much alike as linen and railway spikes, Kim shy and withdrawn, Tracy bold and provocative. But if Jenny remembered anything from her own early teens it was that friendships defied all attempts at logic. Kids got together for their own arcane reasons, and any efforts on the part of their parents to interfere were met almost uniformly with defiance. Perhaps that was the nub right there, the inevitable pulling away.
    Jack and Will arrived at the Fallons’ canal-side home at seven o’clock. Will came inside with Jack, paced around in the front hall for a minute, then went back out to his Suburban. He leaned on the horn twice while Nina gathered her things from her car, then drove off with her in stony silence.
    After loading the trunk with supplies, the Fallons followed in Jack’s Mercedes. Jack drove while Jenny reclined in the passenger seat, hands resting over her growing abdomen.
    How precious this life is , she thought as they made their way through downtown traffic. And how fragile . In the early years of their marriage she’d been pregnant four times and had lost each of them late in the first trimester. She’d bled heavily each time, on the last occasion requiring a transfusion and earning a strict warning from her obstetrician to practice birth control and adopt. “One more of these could kill you, Jenny.” That had been fourteen years ago, just weeks before she begged Jack to let her adopt the infant girl her obstetrician had found for her, the adorable baby girl she’d christened Kimberly Anne. And now, at thirty-four, she was carrying again. A happy accident. A miracle. But fear was never very far from the surface. She didn’t think she could bear to lose this one, too. All life was a gift, but this one was a special gift. It made her feel whole again, a feeling she’d gotten so far removed from over the years she hadn’t even realized it until the pregnancy test came back positive.
    “How’s our little man?” Jack said, resting a hand on top of Jenny’s. They were crossing the bridge into the neighboring province of Quebec, the pungent reek of the E. B. Eddy paper plant eeling in through the air vents.
    “Sleeping peacefully,” Jenny said. “Could be a girl, you know.”
    Jack smiled, his tan face the color of cherrywood in the glow of the westering sun. “No, honey,” he said, “it’s a boy. I can feel it.”
    * * *
    Two of their guests were already there, seated in