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Show 9? Yet his fear for her showing on his face only made die world skid again, and so she made light of it all. "Of course I'm all right," she said; "I'll bet he's the one who's shocky-wondering what kind of Amazon he ran into. Can't you just see him, chasing this poor weak helpless little girl, and she's running for her life and dear old virtue, and he's almost got her, just grabbing her, when she turns around and it's this giantess. With a book like a baseball bat. Ooooh, did I bash him! He probably thinks / trapped him!" Milt burst into laughter, too much, a great gust of relief, and she laughed with him as if the whole thing could be forgotten. But when he went to the kitchen to mix her a drink, as he tried to gather about her some warmth from his small consoling gestures, abruptly she felt lost to anything he could possibly do. She had not even been able to tell him that the man was a Negro. And so, woodenly, with all the blue passion gone from her eyes, she sat in a chair and looked about her. Home. Above the worn and sagging couch hung her birthday present to Milt, a framed print of Picasso's "The Old Guitarist," but now neither this place nor anything in it seemed to have anything to do with her, she felt a stranger in a strange place. Then, with an intensity which left her feeling bruised and weak inside, a yearning for her past rushed upon her, home in Texas and the good smell of the kitchen and the clean virginal orderliness of her own room. She remembered a high school swimming party, a boy she had liked and the clear green water, the abundance of the water, cool and refreshing and clean. Clean and simple too the feeling of joy she had had that day, a sense of oneness with her crowd and the laughter, now gone, and she wept for the past. But she blinked back her tears to take the whiskey Milt offered her, raising his drink, smiling: "Here's to my giantess and her good right arm." But then he was frowning: "I wonder why in the hell he took the book." "I guess he settled for anything he could get." "Man, was that a come-down." "Thank you, sir," she said, making the required nod. "But maybe he was an intellectual rapist." "Likes Plato's ideas on love? Ha! I hope the bastard goes blind reading it." Again tears filled her eyes, bitter, burning. "Oh, why me?" she cried out to Milt, wanting him to take her safe into his arms. Wtty ' >('C H< <U\ it-J 5 SO IteAnf.'t' I - Cv£>y ittei |