Report from the Interior (31 page)

… it was the sight of a roomful of teenagers dancing to the music that kept you watching …

… the selected stories of O. Henry, and for a time you reveled in those brittle, ingenious tales with their surprise endings and narrative jolts …

… now that
Doctor Zhivago
had been translated into English, you went out and bought a copy for yourself … confident that this was most assuredly literature of the first rank …

… Carey and his wife, Louise, are sunning themselves on the deck of a cabin cruiser.

… Dr. Bramson … no longer smiling and confident …

… Carey sitting in what appears to be the largest armchair in the world.

… you are amazed … by the immensity of the telephone receiver he holds in his hand …

On October seventeenth, he is down to thirty-six and a half inches and weighs fifty-two pounds.

Because he is living in a dollhouse. Because he is no more than three inches tall.

… reduced to the size of a mouse …

… a thumb-sized man running for his life …

… making do with whatever objects and nourishment are at hand in that dank suburban basement …

… a man stripped bare, thrown back on himself …