Today's Word: Topsy-turvy

Jimmy didn't like the way Rob leered when he said the name, as if Rob had spent too many nights just a little too drunk, thinking of Nancy, killing her in his mind as bendy smoke rose about his face.

Rob was no killer, at least Jimmy didn't think so. But tonight, with the jarring and yet soft barroom lights in his eyes, lighting them like two little lanterns in twin lighthouses, Jimmy could see another Rob -- a callous Rob. A Rob who didn't care about office politics, writing his fantasy epic novel or the 50 cent goldfish he had been nursing the last six months. Tonight Rob was all hate. And the look of it made Jimmy's stomach turn topsy-turvy, the way the Ninja had at Six Flags when he was a kid.

Jimmy sipped his beer, belched silently, and said, "What did Nancy do to you that was so damn bad?"

Rob turned those two points of light (like old Bush's thousand points of light -- or had that just been a Dana Carvey skit? -- crystallized into two, piercing needles) upon his old friend. Jimmy shivered. He couldn't help it. There was death there, lurking so close to the brim that Jimmy wondered how Rob's insides kept from shriveling up and turning black.

"She's having my baby," he said, his voice even, his temper calm; and wasn't that worse? Oh, God, how that was worse than anger or malice or seething vehemence.

That even, clear tone turned Jimmy's heart to tar.