Blue Skies


 
 
 Cover
 Title
 Part I
 
 1. They Were Like Jewelry
 2. Entomophage
 3. Field Study
 4. High Tide
 5. Apis Mellifera
 6. Bug Boy
 7. Willie II, Willie I
 8. No Matter How Many Blows
 9. The Wedding
 10. Tahoe
 Part II
 
 11. She Didn’t Like Flying
 12. It Was A Rowboat
 13. Peeling A Grape
 14. The Twins
 15. The Next-To-Last Chrysalis
 16. Sierra
 17. Python Mom
 18. Ashes
 19. After The Funeral
 Part III
 
 20. In The Night, When She Couldn’t Sleep
 21. The Heat
 22. What is Flammable and What is Not
 23. Eaten From Within
 24. The Fire This Time
 25. It Was A Skiff
 26. It All Pales
 Acknowledgments
 Also by T. Coraghessan Boyle
 Copyright
 
 
 
 
 
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 BLUE SKIES
 A Novel
 T. CORAGHESSAN BOYLE
 
 Liveright Publishing Corporation
 A Division of W.W. Norton & Company
 Celebrating a Century of Independent Publishing
 For Marie Alex and Griff Stevens
 Blue skies Smiling at me Nothing but blue skies Do I see.
 — IRVING BERLIN
 ALSO BY T. CORAGHESSAN BOYLE
 NOVELS
 Talk to Me (2021)
 Outside Looking In (2019)
 The Terranauts (2016)
 The Harder They Come (2015)
 San Miguel (2012)
 When the Killing’s Done (2011)
 The Women (2009)
 Talk Talk (2006)
 The Inner Circle (2004)
 Drop City (2003)
 A Friend of the Earth (2000)
 Riven Rock (1998)
 The Tortilla Curtain (1995)
 The Road to Wellville (1993)
 East Is East (1990)
 World’s End (1987)
 Budding Prospects (1984)
 Water Music (1982)
 SHORT STORIES
 I Walk Between the Raindrops (2022)
 The Relive Box (2017)
 T. C. Boyle Stories II (2013)
 Wild Child & Other Stories (2010)
 The Human Fly (2005)
 Tooth and Claw (2005)
 After the Plague (2001)
 T. C. Boyle Stories (1998)
 Without a Hero (1994)
 If the River Was Whiskey (1989)
 Greasy Lake & Other Stories (1985)
 Descent of Man (1979)
 ANTHOLOGIES
 DoubleTakes (2004; coedited with K. Kvashay-Boyle)
 1
 THEY WERE LIKE JEWELRY
 THEY WERE LIKE JEWELRY, LIVING JEWELRY, AND SHE COULD see herself wearing one wrapped round her shoulders to Bobo’s or the Cornerstone and sitting at a sidewalk table while people strolled by and pretended not to notice. It would make a statement, that was for sure. She’d put on a tube top so you could see the contrast it made with her bare skin—black, definitely black, and she’d wear her black jeans too and maybe her fedora—and she’d just look down at her drink or up at Todd as if nothing were out of the ordinary. And he’d go along with it too, she was sure he would—they were in that phase of their relationship where he’d given her a ring and they’d moved in together and she could have just about anything she wanted.
 Except a baby. Are you joking, or what? I’m no way even close to being ready for that, and plus the expense, Jesus. He wouldn’t let her have a dog either—or even a cat. He was allergic. Hair. Dander. Fleas. And did she have any idea of what his parents had to spend on inhalers and injections and the rest of it when he was a kid? She didn’t. And at this point she didn’t care. Talk about impulse buying—the minute she walked through the door and saw them glittering there in their plexiglass cases she knew she had to have one.
 The shop was called Herps and it was located on the fringe of the shopping district, where the fast-food places were and the auto supply and a couple hole-in-the-wall Haitian and Cuban restaurants. She wouldn’t even have noticed it, let alone pushed through the door, if she hadn’t been so bored. Todd was having the car detailed and he couldn’t