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Show Acting Alone Page 454 Sugar Building, the guards had rudely shoved her away. In a habit she was given Carte Blanche. Either they were religious men or they were trying to tell her something about her sense of fashion in clothing. Simone was malingering this morning. This had become her usual custom ever since Polly had exclostrated. So an extra habit was pretty much available to anybobody who required it overnight. One size fits all, supposedly, when it comes to these black woolen garments - at least in the width department. Some odd-sized nuns must shorten or lengthen the skirts for either safety or modesty's sake, and Simone's robe happened to be several inches too short for Polly. But still it looked authentic enough to get her past the ignorant armies that occupied the lobby in the Holly Sugar Building. It still felt extremely strange to wear panty hose and pants and a bra and a blouse. Polly felt as exposed as though she were wearing a too-small one-piece bathing suit as she entered the sacristy and stood quietly by the scorched and split vestment cabinets. She listened, mostly for old times' sake, to Bopp's voice but not to his words, for his words alternated the insipid with the infuriating. In his unheard words, he was "suiting up for the big double header." He seemed to require certain bits of information from Polly today. But he was not simply lying back, puffy and imperious as a Borgia Pope, demanding his satisfaction, as had become Bopp's habit, pampered convent chaplain that he was. No, he was approaching his objective from an oblique, sickeningly coy angle, working up to the request for whatever true facts he was dying to receive by means of theological or ecclesiological chitchat. This was an indication that, to the extent Bopp was capable of feeling such things, |
