Michael Malone - Weebly

Vincent but without a phone to call her many
acquaintances, or a post office from which to receive
her many catalogs, or a committee in which to exchange
her many ideas. It was different from the loneliness of
Prudence Lattice, who had lost hope, or of Sammy
Smalter, who had never allowed himself to have much,
or of Winslow Abernathy, who had had only one day to
assimilate solitude, or of Judith Haig, who found it
impossible to assimilate anything else, or of Limus
Barnum, whose need was so mammoth that no one
person, no number of people, could fill it, and whose
anger at not being filled was so naked that everyone
looked the other way.
All these people lived alone in Dingley Falls and
were convinced that happiness lived in more crowded
houses. They should have seen A.A. Hayes drive,
slightly intoxicated, enviously past the bachelor quarters
of Sidney Blossom, on his way home to four children he
failed to understand and a wife whose proximity was
more painful because his love—which in the beginning
he had thought as enduring as marble—had not yet
entirely been worn away by the oceans of rage that beat