Piccolo stralcio, del tutto innocuo, del libro in questione.
Bobby Singer was about to make dinner for himself and the boys when the phone rang. He grabbed his new cordless appliance off the wall-mount and held it up to his ear.
"Hello?"
In response, the phone rang again.
With a sigh, he held it in front of his face and pushed the *talk* button.
"Hello?"
It was John Winchester.
"What the hell you tryin' to pull, Bobby?"
Now Bobby scowled, wondering why, exactly, he put up with this sort of crap.
Voices from the living room wafted into kitchen.
"Deeeeean! That's my pen!"
"So get another pen, Dexter Sammy."
He ran his other hand through his thick hair.
"I ain't pullin' a damn thing, John," he replied, holding his temper as best he could. "What the hell are you talkin' about?"
"You send me out here, ship me this sword, and I'm stuck flailin' around like an idiot. The damned thing doesn't work."
Bobby started to rub his eyes, but noticed that there were tufts of red hair between his fingers. He was starting to go bald, and his uncharitable moments he blamed it entirely on John.
"Look, why don't you go to talk to that Berkeley professor that gave Bartow the thing?"
There was a long pause before he heard John's reply.
"What's his name?"
"Marcus Wallace."
Bobby went into the living room. Dean was standing on his tiptoes and holding his left hand as high in the air as he could - Sam's pen clutched between his fingers. Sam, for his part, was jumping up into the air trying to grab it from his much taller older brother.
Shaking his head, Bobby rummaged through the papers on his desk.
"Hang on - okay, here it is," he added as he liberated the letter that had been packed away among Bartow's effects. Finding Wallace's direct line at the UC-Berkeley campus, he read it off.
"All right," John said, "I'll give him a call. If he doesn't pan out, though, I'm gonna need to get creative. It's that, or end up shake-and-baked. I'll talk to you later, Bobby."
"The boys are just fine, by the way," Bobby said quickly, before John could hang up.
Lowering his arm, Dean turned toward Bobby.
"Is that Dad?"
Sam took advantage of the distraction to snatch the pen from his brother's hand with a piercing "Ha!" of triumph, but Dean barely noticed.
John sounded impatient on the other end of the line.
"I figured they were, since if they weren't, you'd have said something," he said. "I need to go, the long-distance charges are murder."
With that, he hung up.
"Can I talk to him?" Dean asked pleadingly.
Pushing the *talk* button again to close the connection on his end, Bobby let his hand drop to his side.
"Sorry Dean, he, uh - was on his way out the door. But he told me to tell you both to behave yourselves and do what I tell you. And that he loves you."
Tilting his head, Dean gave Bobby a sidelong glance.
"Did he really say that?"
"Course he did. So I'm tellin' you right now, boy - stop stealing from your brother. You need a pen, ask me for one, all right?"
Dean nodded.
"Okay. I did all my homework already anyhow."
Now it was Bobby's turn to give Dean a sidelong glance.
"Really?"
Unlike Bobby, the ten years-old boy wilted.
"Well most of it."
"That's what I thought. You get it done before I'm finished cookin', all right?"
"Okay."
Dean sat down next to Sam on the couch. Sam had gone back to the homework he'd been working on when Dean stole his pen.
Dean looked up at Bobby again.
"Can I have a pen?"
Bobby grinned.
"Sure." He opened the top drawer of his desk and fished out a ballpoint he'd gotten from one of the hotels he'd stayed in during a hunt.
He handed it over, and headed back into the kitchen.
"It won't write!" came the voice of a ten years-old. "This pen sucks!"
as he went into the fridge for butter to spread onto the pan, Bobby decided it was entire Winchester family that was making him bald.
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