OCR Text |
Show 137 coleslaw with onions. "Some more wine, perhaps?" she said. "Why not?" he said, looking at his glass. "Why not indeed?" she said, and poured it. He drank it and stared at the stem of his glass. If she wanted to maintain the fiction that things were all right between them, that was going to be her problem, he had decided. Was he planning to romp down to the old Coach and Seven tonight? she wondered. Grunt. She begged his pardon? Yes. Yes, he was planning to romp down to the Coach and Seven tonight. He romped there most nights. There was a small-business license hung on the wall in a conspicuous place there with his name on it and the names of two other people, and they had a joint account at a West Los Angeles bank with their three names on it too, followed by a line that read "dba The Coach and Seven." It was what bankers called a fictitious name, which meant not that they didn't exist but that they were not a corporation and did not sell shares. They did not, in fact, sell much of anything, and that account rarely had enough money in it to rent the building, but since his partners tolerated his company he thought he owed them his presence to help out when he could see his way clear to it. She had left the room during the part about the business license and now returned carrying a fresh leotard which she folded up very small and placed in the bottom of a large woven bag with handles and a drawstring. "I wonder," she said, "if while you're seeing your way clear to it you might perhaps drive me back to school. Andrea can bring me home. I'll |