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Show 171 him by refusing. With a very little effort Lorin wove the loose strands of the seventh sequence together and laced it up snugly before her eyes as she talked on and on, none the wiser. She little suspected her sudden splitting off into a roommate only now yawning awake in the next room (itself recently added) and padding sleepily in to join them in the early-morning shower, the two of them afterwards patting him dry with downy towels and tying a bright blue ribbon around his rosy prick; or their further division into a roomful of girls with round faces and bangs, wearing hand-stitched green ponchos and combing their hair in front of mirrors that gave back a profusion of round faces at right, acute, and oblique angles to each other, smiling indulgently at the dozen or so beribboned erections that wept with pleasure as their owner lay on the floor, twitching. Midnight having come and gone, the Coach and Seven was emptying, and Simon looked around in mild surprise. He guessed, he said, he was going to go home, unless one of the others wanted to stay longer. He scratched his scalp and looked at his fingernails, brushing off with his thumb the debris that had collected. Lorin did not rise as Gloriana got up to look for her purse, but waited until she glanced at him, and then handed it to her (his chair had crept over it) and said, "Drop in again sometime." She took the purse and looked at him appraisingly for a moment. Then her face lit with a bright smile. "Okay," she said. It was as though the thought had never occurred to her. Noel, to do penance for arriving late, was staying to close up and sweep out, and Lorin drove home as fast as he dared, ignoring the blinking red lights at both intersections. He entered a dark house, stumbling over a wicker bag left by the bookcase in the living room, found the wine standing |