Daily Dose

From Outside Looking In, by T. C. Boyle

ONE COUPLE

"One couple (the man turned out to be a psychologist friend of Tim's who was dosing himself with LSD in the hope of recovering from an addiction to amphetamines and alcohol) seemed to have moved into one of the vacant rooms on the second floor with a steamer trunk and a dozen cardboard boxes of belongings, which they promptly scattered all over the house. they appeared only at meals, sitting passively at the end of the table among the children, waiting to be fed, and the thing was, both of them had long beaky noses and feathery hair so that they looked like nothing so much as baby birds in a nest -- nestlings, that was what they were, and that was how she wound up referring to them for the first week or so, as in, Anybody seen the Nestlings yet?"

From Chapter 6