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Show City Motel -|23 a l i t t l e glass eye with a thick lens? Was this breathing a joke? In spite of herself, however, the hypnotic rhythm began to soothe her anxiety. She drifted into a dream-like state and began to think of China. She'd wanted to go there for a long time and often sang, "A Slow Boat to China" as she and Mr. Jackson crossed the miles. She imagined how i t would be in that sea of humanity with its straw hats, san pans, winter palaces, but then she started thinking about the breathing again-the breath of those millions of people and all of the carbon dioxide that the People's Republic of China gave back to the world to help the plants grow. John, the salesman upstairs in Room 4, was floating in a barge in a bay, lost in dreams about the South Seas. He was dressed in a red wraparound s k i r t with white flowers on i t , and a beautiful brown lady with succulent breasts was feeding him poi with two fingers. The uniforms in his sample case were hanging out on a clothesline stretched between two palms, being tossed to and fro by the ocean breeze. John's wife was sitting in the door of a grass hut, smiling from ear to ear, beneficence on her face. And the waves rolled in and rolled out, all to the rhythm of the breathing in the motel walIs. Larry and Alice in Room 1 had fallen asleep. Trucks whizzed by on the highway outside of their window, but they heard nothing. Alice's head was clear of worries about explanations and justifications because in the final moment before sleep, she had decided that she wouldn't return home. She had enough money to buy toothpaste and a small breakfast. That was all that mattered as she drifted into heavy sleep on the man-she-loved's shoulder, surrounded by his arms and a calm, steady breathing which she thought was his |