He remembered the children. He started toward home. He searched out his house, and turned on his gamma vision. Like the superhearing, it still worked over short spaces.
The children were asleep in their beds, just as he had left them. But something was wrong. He peered closer. They had dark hair, not blonde. And they were boys.
The Levitan kids.
He realized his mistake. From the air most of Middleville looked alike. He had picked out the house set in the same position, but on the next block.
Mike and Sue Levitan lived there. One of his Top-Three couples. Mike, a lawyer, was out of town, handling a civil rights case in Tennessee. Sue was at the women's group with Pamela. Dolley Madison would be baby-sitting.
She was sixteen years old. Her real name was Dorothy Madison. Everyone called her Dolley. She was the head cheerleader at Middleville High. She got all the baby-sitting jobs she needed. Women liked her to baby-sit because they sensed she would be good in case of a fire. Men liked to pick her up and drive her home, because she had the prettiest face and the cutest ass in Middleville.
He switched his gaze to the family room, where Dolley would be doing her homework. She wasn't in the family room, she was in the living room. She wasn't doing her homework.
A gangly, pimply-faced boy was lying on the sofa. He was about fifteen years old. He didn't have any clothes on. Dolley was sitting, spread-kneed, on the lower part of his belly. She was gently rocking back and forth. She didn't have any clothes on, either.
He tried to avert his gaze. But his gamma vision seemed locked in place. From disuse, he decided. He saw Dolley Madison rock back and forth eight, ten, twenty times. Still his eyes wouldn't move, try as he might to move them. He saw her shift her position, slide her ass up the young man's chest, till she was squatting over his face, leaning backward, her hands gripping the sofa, her head thrown back, her eyes closed, her mouth open, her young breasts rose-tipped and reaching for the ceiling. As Mickey Spillane would have said, she was a natural blonde.
Thwack!
A huge wooden fist slammed into the side of his head. His vision went dark. Stars, question marks, exclamation points danced in his brain. He felt himself falling, falling; and landed heavily on the curb. He lay motionless for almost a minute, till his head stopped buzzing. Then he opened his eyes, and looked up.
A tall, thick telephone pole was towering above him.
