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Show 34 "I think I can manage that," he said stiffly. He pulled over to the curb, downshifted to first, and when the string of cars behind him had passed jerked across the street, bouncing over the median and narrowly missing a car that was coming down State Street and whose driver honked and slammed on the brakes. He would not say another word to her the rest of the way home, he decided. He didn't much care whether she knew about his testimony or not. He sat on a stiff green bench turning over leaves in his sketchbook and feeling the slats press against his vertebrae. Someone else's half-drunk milkshake sat beside him with part of its edge crushed in and two crimped straws sprawling over the lip. He had already made two quick studies of it, one with severe foreshortening that made the straws resemble thick pipes emerging from the mouth of a cannon, and the other a side view that emphasized the deformity of the waxed container, in which the straws were reduced to slender feelers. There were other ways of looking at it too, and he had contemplated making a third study on a different page but changed his mind when he noticed some twelve-year-olds over by the bike racks laughing about something dirty and looking his way occasionally. He knew he wouldn't actually be able to draw anything while he was being watched and he wanted to have the page open on something presentable that he could be scratching additional lines on if they rode by and looked over his shoulder. It was a black clothbound sketchbook, the kind that imposed permanence on anything you drew in it. Lorin had bought it the month before but had been too intimidated to begin drawing in it immediately. He had waited a few days and then, feeling furtive and dishonest, |