{"product_id":"life-expectancy-isbn-9780345533388","title":"Life Expectancy","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNEW YORK TIMES\u003c\/i\u003e BESTSELLER\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Before he died on a storm-wracked night, Jimmy Tock’s grandfather predicted that there would be five dark days in his grandson’s life—five dates whose terrible events Jimmy must prepare himself to face. The first is to occur in his twentieth year, the last in his thirtieth. What terrifying events await Jimmy on these five critical days? What challenges must he survive? The path he follows will defy every expectation and will take all the love, humor, and courage he possesses. For who Jimmy Tock is and what he must accomplish on the five days his world turns is a mystery both dangerous and wondrous.“Delightful . . . funny, scary and entertaining.”—\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post Book World\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Koontz is a master storyteller and a daring writer, and in his novels he gives readers bright hope in a dark world. [\u003ci\u003eLife Expectancy\u003c\/i\u003e], an exemplar of his extraordinary work [and] one of his most unusual yet, will leave readers aglow.”—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e (starred review)\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Brilliant . . . [Koontz] writes of hope and love in the midst of evil in profoundly inspiring and moving ways.”—\u003ci\u003eChicago Sun-Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “A roller-coaster ride . . . remarkable . . . Prepare to be enchanted.”—\u003ci\u003eThe Sunday Oregonian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eDean Koontz, \u003c\/b\u003ethe author of many #1\u003ci\u003e New York Times \u003c\/i\u003ebestsellers, lives in Southern California with his wife, Gerda, their golden retriever, Anna, and the enduring spirit of their golden, Trixie.\u003ci\u003eChapter One\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e On the night that I was born, my paternal grand-father, Josef Tock,  made ten predictions that shaped my life. Then he died in the very minute that my  mother gave birth to me. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Josef had never previously engaged in fortune-telling.  He was a pastry chef. He made éclairs and lemon tarts, not predictions. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Some lives,  conducted with grace, are beautiful arcs bridging this world to eternity. I am thirty  years old and can't for certain see the course of my life, but rather than a graceful  arc, my passage seems to be a herky-jerky line from one crisis to another. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I am  a lummox, by which I do not mean \u003ci\u003estupid\u003c\/i\u003e, only that I am biggish for my size and not  always aware of where my feet are going. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e This truth is not offered in a spirit  of self-deprecation or even humility. Apparently, being a lummox is part of my charm,  an almost winsome trait, as you will see. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e No doubt I have now raised in your mind  the question of what I intend to imply by \"biggish for my size.\" Autobiography is  proving to be a trickier task than I first imagined. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I am not as tall as people  seem to think I am, in fact not tall at all by the standards of professional—or even  of high school—basketball. I am neither plump nor as buff as an iron-pumping fitness  fanatic. At most I am somewhat husky. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Yet men taller and heavier than I am often  call me \"big guy.\" My nickname in school was Moose. From childhood, I have heard  people joke about how astronomical our grocery bills must be. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The disconnect between  my true size and many people's perception of my dimensions has always mystified me.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e My wife, who is the linchpin of my life, claims that I have a presence much bigger  than my physique. She says that people measure me by the impression I make on them.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I find this notion ludicrous. It is bullshit born of love. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e If sometimes I make  an outsized impression on people, it's as likely as not because I fell on them. Or  stepped on their feet. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In Arizona, there is a place where a dropped ball appears  to roll uphill in defiance of gravity. In truth, this effect is a trick of perspective  in which elements of a highly unusual landscape conspire to deceive the eye. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I  suspect I am a similar freak of nature. Perhaps light reflects oddly from me or bends  around me in a singular fashion, so I appear to be more of a hulk than I am. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e On  the night I was born in Snow County Hospital, in the community of Snow Village, Colorado,  my grandfather told a nurse that I would be twenty inches long and weigh eight pounds  ten ounces. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The nurse was startled by this prediction not because eight pounds  ten is a huge newborn—many are larger—and not because my grandfather was a pastry  chef who suddenly began acting as though he were a crystal-ball gazer. Four days  previously he had suffered a massive stroke that left him paralyzed on his right  side and unable to speak; yet from his bed in the intensive care unit, he began making  prognostications in a clear voice, without slur or hesitation. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He also told her  that I would be born at 10:46 p.m. and that I would suffer from syndactyly. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e That  is a word difficult to pronounce \u003ci\u003ebefore\u003c\/i\u003e a stroke, let alone after one. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Syndactyly—as  the observing nurse explained to my father—is a congenital defect in which two or  more fingers or toes are joined. In serious cases, the bones of adjacent digits are  fused to such an extent that two fingers share a single nail. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Multiple surgeries  are required to correct such a condition and to ensure that the afflicted child will  grow into an adult capable of giving the F-you finger to anyone who sufficiently  annoys him. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In my case, the trouble was toes. Two were fused on the left foot,  three on the right. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e My mother, Madelaine—whom my father affectionately calls Maddy  or sometimes the Mad One—insists that they considered forgoing the surgery and, instead,  christening me Flipper. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Flipper was the name of a dolphin that once starred in  a hit TV show—not surprisingly titled \u003ci\u003eFlipper\u003c\/i\u003e—in the late 1960s. My mother describes  the program as \"delightfully, wonderfully, hilariously stupid.\" It went off the air  a few years before I was born. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Flipper, a male, was played by a trained dolphin  named Suzi. This was most likely the first instance of transvestism on television.  Actually, that's not the right word because transvestism is a male dressing as a  female for sexual gratification. Besides, Suzi—alias Flipper—didn't wear clothes.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e So it was a program in which the female star always appeared nude and was sufficiently  butch to pass for a male. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Just two nights ago at dinner, over one of my mother's  infamous cheese-and-broccoli pies, she asked rhetorically if it was any wonder that  such a dire collapse in broadcast standards, begun with \u003ci\u003eFlipper\u003c\/i\u003e, should lead to the  boring freak-show shock that is contemporary television. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Playing her game, my father  said, \"It actually began with \u003ci\u003eLassie\u003c\/i\u003e. In every show, she was nude, too.\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Lassie  was always played by male dogs,\" my mother replied. \"There you go,\" Dad said, his  point made. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I escaped being named Flipper when successful surgeries restored my  toes to the normal condition. In my case, the fusion involved only skin, not bones.  The separation was a relatively simple procedure. Nevertheless, on that uncommonly  stormy night, my grandfather's prediction of syndactyly proved true. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e If I had been  born on a night of unremarkable weather, family legend would have transformed it  into an eerie calm, every leaf motionless in breathless air, night birds silent with  expectation. The Tock family has a proud history of self-dramatization. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Even allowing  for exaggeration, the storm must have been violent enough to shake the Colorado mountains  to their rocky foundations. The heavens cracked and flashed as if celestial armies  were at war. Still in the womb, I remained unaware of all the thunderclaps. And once  born, I was probably distracted by my strange feet. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e This was August 9, 1974, the  day Richard Nixon resigned as President of the United States. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Nixon's fall has  no more to do with me than the fact that John Denver's \"Annie's Song\" was the number-one  record in the country at the time. I mention it only to provide historical perspective.  Nixon or no Nixon, what I find most important about August 9, 1974, is my birth—and  my grandfather's predictions. My sense of perspective has an egocentric taint. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Perhaps more clearly than if I had been there, because of vivid pictures painted  by numerous family stories of that night, I can see my father, Rudy Tock, walking  back and forth from one end of County Hospital to the other, between the maternity  ward and the ICU, between joy at the prospect of his son's pending arrival and grief  over his beloved father's quickening slide into death. z With blue vinyl-tile floor,  pale-green wainscoting, pink walls, a yellow ceiling, and orange-and-white stork-patterned  drapes, the expectant- fathers' lounge churned with the negative energy of color  overload. It would have served well as the nervous-making set for a nightmare about  a children's-show host who led a secret life as an ax murderer. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The chain-smoking  clown didn't improve the ambience. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Rudy stood birth watch with only one other man,  not a local but a performer with the circus that was playing a one-week engagement  in a meadow at the Halloway Farm. He called himself Beezo. Curiously, this proved  not to be his clown name but one that he'd been born with: Konrad Beezo. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Some say  there is no such thing as destiny, that what happens just happens, without purpose  or meaning. Konrad's surname would argue otherwise. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Beezo was married to Natalie,  a trapeze artist and a member of a renowned aerialist family that qualified as circus  royalty. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Neither of Natalie's parents, none of her brothers and sisters, and none  of her high-flying cousins had accompanied Beezo to the hospital. This was a performance  night, and as always the show must go on. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Evidently the aerialists kept their distance  also because they had not approved of one of their kind taking a clown for a husband.  Every subculture and ethnicity has its objects of bigotry. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e As Beezo waited nervously  for his wife to deliver, he muttered unkind judgments of his in-laws. \"Self-satisfied,\"  he called them, and \"devious.\" The clown's perpetual glower, rough voice, and bitterness  made Rudy uncomfortable. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Angry words plumed from him in exhalations of sour smoke:  \"duplicitous\" and \"scheming\" and, poetically for a clown, \"blithe spirits of the  air, but treacherous when the ground is under them.\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Beezo was not in full costume.  Furthermore, his stage clothes were in the Emmett Kelly sad-faced tradition rather  than the bright polka-dot plumage of the average Ringling Brothers clown. He cut  a strange figure nonetheless. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e A bright plaid patch blazed across the seat of his  baggy brown suit. The sleeves of his jacket were comically short. In one lapel bloomed  a fake flower the diameter of a bread plate. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Before racing to the hospital with  his wife, he had traded clown shoes for sneakers and had taken off his big round  red rubber nose. White greasepaint still encircled his eyes, however, and his cheeks  remained heavily rouged, and he wore a rumpled porkpie hat. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Beezo's bloodshot eyes  shone as scarlet as his painted cheeks, perhaps because of the acrid smoke wreathing  his head, although Rudy suspected that strong drink might be involved as well. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In those days, smoking was permitted everywhere, even in many hospital waiting rooms.  Expectant fathers traditionally gave out cigars by way of celebration. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e When not  at his dying father's bedside, poor Rudy should have been able to take refuge in  that lounge. His grief should have been mitigated by the joy of his pending parenthood.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Instead, both Maddy and Natalie were long in labor. Each time that Rudy returned  from the ICU, waiting for him was the glowering, muttering, bloody-eyed clown, burning  through pack after pack of unfiltered Lucky Strikes. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e As drumrolls of thunder shook  the heavens, as reflections of lightning shuddered through the windows, Beezo made  a stage of the maternity ward lounge. Restlessly circling the blue vinyl floor, from  pink wall to pink wall, he smoked and fumed. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Do you believe that snakes can fly,  Rudy Tock? Of course you don't. But snakes \u003ci\u003ecan\u003c\/i\u003e fly. I've seen them high above the  center ring. They're well paid and applauded, these cobras, these diamondbacks, these  copperheads, these hateful \u003ci\u003evipers\u003c\/i\u003e.\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Poor Rudy responded to this vituperative rant  with murmured consolation, clucks of the tongue, and sympathetic nods. He didn't  want to encourage Beezo, but he sensed that a failure to commiserate would make him  a target for the clown's anger. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Pausing at a storm-washed window, his painted face  further patinated by the lightning-cast patterns of the streaming raindrops on the  glass, Beezo said, \"Which are you having, Rudy Tock—a son or daughter?\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Beezo consistently  addressed Rudy by his first and last names, as if the two were one: \u003ci\u003eRudytock\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"They  have a new ultrasound scanner here,\" Rudy replied, \"so they could tell us whether  it's a boy or girl, but we don't want to know. We just care is the baby healthy,  and it is.\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Beezo's posture straightened, and he raised his head, thrusting his  face toward the window as if to bask in the pulsing storm light. \"I don't need ultrasound  to tell me what I know. Natalie is giving me a son. Now the Beezo name won't die  when I do. I'll call him Punchinello, after one of the first and greatest of clowns.\"New York Times bestseller","brand":"Bantam","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300141617381,"sku":"NP9780345533388","price":9.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780345533388.jpg?v=1767731426","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/life-expectancy-isbn-9780345533388","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}