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Show ftf a ploy to get Bill to pay attention to you again, he said. She hung her head, showing die white back of her neck. But it's not so hard to forgive you, seeing it didn't work. I think it might work yet, she said calmly. Once he's had his new toy for a while, once he's bored playing with it . . . He might take you back as a substitute? Ah, Joan, if I've ever seen a hooked man, he's it. It's just an obsession; it has to end. I was talking to one of his new friends, they're all nuts on this hi-fi stuff too, and he told me that BUI is so wrapped up in building the perfect machine that he hasn't even noticed the new thing coming in. Stereophonic, it's called. So? He'll just have a new obsession. But she shook her head, unperturbed. This guy's making us a set, in secret and all, and I've already got my eye on just the apartment. Oh, I'll fix it up so cleverly, lovely, and as soon as he gets tired of his little toy I'm going to whisk him over there and right into a big party and get him drunk and let him joke and flirt his fool head off. It's too late, Roland said, and in the gloom it was hard to tell whether he meant for her and Bill, or for himself, or all of them. Regardless, it did not diminish her confidence one bit; she was so certain of the future that Jhe trembled. And then diey heard the train. Rather, they realized that they had been hearing it in the distance, approaching, for some time. But it was getting closer, and they both lifted their heads to listen. Funny, she said, I didn't know there were train tracks around here. And then they realized they were hearing probably the most faithful reproduction of sound since the echo. Of a train. And they were amazed. People on the street were lifting their heads too, people coming out of houses and apartments to hear it, looking up the street to see it. Joan and Roland began to laugh. The train came closer, more people piled out to see it. This neighborhood ain't zoned for no trains, said a fat woman indignantly. We'll have a protest meeting; we don't want no trains moving in here. Roland and Joan set down their brandy glasses under a tree the better to laugh; they laughed harder than it was funny. And yet the realism of the train was incredible, the sound of it approaching a grade crossing, whistling, and then roaring on past. As it receded hi-fi 175 |