Pool_2

Price-Johnson wedding reception being a major coup with emphasis on Price's son-in- law being a Protestant whereas his daughter was a Catholic like her mother. Macaluso just grit his teeth, she thought in obvious affirmation of that problem. But the grimace was from irritation that anybody could even give a shit. Mac quickly nodded. He had heard so many fragments of this event that its mere recall was numbing. He began to detach, "Hmmmm. Got a point, there," he tested. It worked, he thought, slipping out, just keeping a half ear out. Shannon and each of the two lawyers thought that his comment was directed to one of the two others and each one felt a little embarrassed about having not caught the thing about which the doctor had thought a point had been made. So they began to attend to each other's comments promptly and got into the subject matter in earnest. The discussion of legal issues became wallpaper. Only intermittently seeded by surrounding conversation and Shannon's gloating, Macaluso's mind was floating on the flood of recent inconsistencies. There were so many. Seeking connection, incongruous thoughts were tumbling in ill fitting juxtapositions. Deeper and deeper into his disconnect, fragments, events, discussions, readings, nostalgia, and projection - all swirled transparently in a color show of overlapping hues of interpretation. "Don't trust him. Price. Some name! Got a price. Bet everything has, to him. Maybe an axe to grind..." An oddly appealing mental image of a twisted bitter poet gripping a blood dripping axe interposed itself. A demon poet, "..sucking up to that overbearing ass hole, mmm, nah, that didn't gel. Gotta be more there. Though the newspapers did report... a fugative?.. at a recent wedding reception? Facts fit but not the spirituality. And what's the terrorism deal when the whole thing was planned? Whose bull shit was that? Axes to grind... so many... McGuiness.. a man of every