A look of utter horror had crossed his face, and it lingered still in his eyes and around the corners of his mouth. “Yeah,” Tommy said. “That’s just the way I felt.” “You could have told me what was in the box,” Carella said, beginning to think his future brother-in-law was something of a sadist. He had never liked spiders. During the war, stationed on a Pacific island, he had fought as bitterly against crawling jungle arachnids as he had against the Japanese. “You think this is a gag somebody played?” he asked incredulously. “I did before I opened the box. Now I don’t know. You’d have to have a pretty queer sense of humor to give somebody a black widow spider. Or any kind of a spider, for Christ’s sake!” “Is that coffee ready?” “Just about.” “I’m really going to need a cup. Spiders have two effects on me. My mouth dries up, and I get itchy all over.” “I just get itchy,” Tommy said. “When I was in basic training in Texas, we had to shake our shoes out every morning before we put them on.
