22/01/2026 21:50

---

         It was a Saturday. It was the first present any of my mother's beaus gave me that I kept. Swaddled as he was, it was a good thing, I thought, that Owen didn't have to pee. My grandmother seized the large brooch at the throat of her dress-she appeared to have suddenly choked

How could it ever have occurred to me that a fellow eleven-year-old was thinking any such thing? That Owen Meany was a Chosen One Occasionally, she would surprise us with a salad-the dressing for which was composed of too much vinegar and the same cheap olive oil she had employed in her assault of the onion. And the headmaster did not flinch-or even appear the slightest surprised-to see someone already standing at the podium. It was a Russell's viper and it bit him while he was peeing under a tree; a later revelation was that the tree stood outside a whorehouse, where Harry had been waiting his turn.