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Show Acting Alone Page 278 one time, Dr. Edwine. She tried to tell herself that she didn't really know why she was speaking about her trip now to this half-dead half-stranger. She tried to ignore the fact that, during his intermittent moments of lucidity, this huge person next to her seemed to be registering a stunned, almost penitent reaction to her words. It was as though the implicit invitation to touch her garment were coming through to him, as though he were regarding her now as a holy woman who might lift the scales from his droopy eyes and make him see the true way to altruism. What kind of world must this man live in, so reflexly to beatify in his imagination a person who has merely given up a single weekend of head-cheesemaking to fly to Washington, D.C, to pass out a few doomed fliers to a couple of deeply uninterested politicians? Horrible men, these politicians, it's true, but chatting with them couldn't possibly be quite as unpleasant as brushing dead hogs' teeth. Polycarpana would have much rather-been assigned her own rightful Coloradoan senators. Come to think of it, perhaps she did feel a smug sense of martyrdom at the prospect of having to spend time sharing space and air with Senator Nimrod, the would-be antichrist. But, was it really any saintly sacrifice to exchange three nights of listening to Simone Stylite snore and moan and even scream on their tubercular sleeping porch on the side of dusty old Cheyenne Mountain, for three nights in a private, quiet, rather posh dormitory room at Trinity Women's College in Washington, D.C? Sometimes Polycarpana wondered why, with all her prescriptive religion, |