Chester Humboldt got there a few minutes late, so he missed the alert on earwigs and Alicia Thorne. He wouldn't have cared anyway; his gardener coped with bugs and he had never heard of Alicia Thorne.

He sat down in the empty back row, on one of those folding chairs unstacked for funerals. It was so inadequate for a tall, well-built man who did push-ups every morning that it made him feel at once uncertain and too big for his britches.

from Heat Lightning (1969)