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Show 47 From the folder she produces a little card: there is a telephone number printed on it. "All you have to do is call them," she says. "They know what I want." Robeck stares at the card. Above the telephone number is an italicized phrase: in time of need. He crushes the card in his fist, stuffs it into his pocket. He shoves his hands into his pockets, walks rapidly back and forth across her empty little room. He feels like a child, when his mother deserted him again and again, appearing in smart business suits or sleek party clothing, to tantalize him with the briefest of kisses, and be gone. He looks at the ticket again. "Will you come back?" he asks finally. She is quiet a long time, sensing his distress, his needfulness, his new, uncharacteristic dependence, and struggling with her own new feelings of confinement, restriction, her longing to go. "Yes," she answers. "Good." But she cannot resist trying once more. "Will you come with me, John? I would like you to." "No." She watches him put his hand into his pocket again, find the crumpled funeral-service card, extract it from his pocket and flatten it out in his hand. He looks at it again, crushes it tightly, and heaves it across the room; it falls behind the dresser she has been so carefully clearing out. "I won't have anything to do with that," he says, and she sees his hand grip tightly as he steadies himself against the edge of her desk. |