I understood that as much as I had resisted the outside, as much as I had constricted my life, as much as I had closed and narrowed the channels into… - Steve Martin

I love money. I love everything about it. I bought some pretty good stuff. Got me a $300 pair of socks. Got a fur sink. An electric dog polisher. A gasoline powered turtleneck sweater. And, of course, I bought some dumb stuff, too.

Hmm. Reports of a monster in the Loch Ness. It baffles the scientists, and it bothers me. I do not need these little mysteries. The unexplainable makes me nervous. I have my home, and everything that comes in the door I understand. I don’t have to worry that the faucet will spit fire. I do not have to worry that the bird will attack the dog. The clock will strike six when it is six and not seven. It is like me; it is my kind of clock.

At this point, Ray Porter imagines an entirely different iceberg beneath Mirabelle's psychic waterline than the one that actually exists.