Michael Malone - Weebly

The head of Marcus Antistius Labeo, a Roman jurist
who had declared the decrees of Caesar and Augustus
illegal for the purely logical reason that the authority of
these two gods had been illegal. Naturally, people had
paid no attention to Antistius, but apparently someone
thought he deserved at least a bust for his purity and
simple logic. Now Abernathy, who had once thought he
would be such a jurist, owned the bust, loving it the way
Lance loved his Jaguar. (Both had been expensive.
Beanie gave expensive gifts and dime-store gifts
indiscriminately.)
The light went out in Lance's bachelor quarters. His
son would now fall effortlessly asleep. When the twins
were first born (terrifyingly small, squirming life bound in
blankets of less length and weight than the little plush
bears Tracy Canopy had given them), Abernathy had
kept awake, fearful that if he slept, Arthur and Lance
would simultaneously cease to breathe. Nothing so
small and unevolved could possibly sustain the
complexity of human life. Pressed beside the nursery
door, he had chosen squalls over silence, for silence
meant death, suffocation, or just a mysterious stop to