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Show 229 his earlier companions, and tell him as much about Yvonne as he thought would not make him uncomfortable, always leaving out the hardcore fact of their living together. Sorenson always seemed pleasantly interested, and now and then even a trifle envious. Sorenson was majoring in chemistry at Southern Methodist University-he would be a senior when he returned there from his mission-and was thinking seriously about chemical engineering as a career. He had a beautiful but bitchy girl friend (Lorin had seen her picture and heard Sorenson's stories) who was waiting for him back in Dallas and who wrote him madcap letters twice a week which he read to Lorin. Lorin found them mildly salacious, but as Sorenson and the girl had somehow remained technical virgins despite breathing heavily in each other's laps since high school, it was more than likely that they would make it through inviolate to a temple wedding as soon as Sorenson was released, and tell their hundreds of randy children and grandchildren that they had saved themselves from the worst until they were safely under the wire. Lorin wished only the best for his companion. He envied people who had so little to hide. The large frame house whose back bedroom they lived in belonged to a non-Mormon family named Green. The husband and wife were in their late forties, and had an indeterminate number of children and grandchildren whom Lorin never managed to sort out. Some of the children still lived at home. Apart from the one or two times he or Sorenson had jokingly tried to interest the couple in talking about the church, the Greens remained on the periphery of their life. They approved of these young men for their clean lives and dedication to values, and they enjoyed telling their friends they had rented the back room to a pair of Mormon missionaries, but otherwise they kept at a friendly distance. The room didn't have its own |