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Show 48 noticed, was beginning to change. As lie watched, it drew away from the corners of the room and gathered around the angel's body. Lorin saw tiny black eyes squeezed nearly shut in the wrinkled face, and shoulders like coathangers drawn up to tiny ears, shaking with laughter, and then the light winked out and he was left by himself in a dark room feeling a thin breeze play over his back from the window. His back felt soaked. He crawled into bed and began repenting at once. * * * Lorin stayed in the living room as long as he could. People had been drifting into the study and he had begun feeling uneasy as he looked around to see who was left. Richard and Nan were still there, off in a corner by the piano, talking with their heads close together as though they still had secrets to share. Dale was still there, and so were Elizabeth and Sue, but Elizabeth had been glancing at the doorway that led down the hall to the study. A thin beaky girl named Marie was still there, sitting by herself in a hard chair watching the others and smiling. There was a couple whom Lorin didn't know kneeling beside the hi-fi and sorting through the records in the wire rack. He heard voices in the kitchen, but when he went by it was only Cindy and Marsha cutting the cakes into little squares. Marsha wore a dishtowel around her waist. He decided he had put it off long enough and walked down the hallway to the study. He did not really approve of this, but he hadn't wanted to say so. He squeezed past Linda Palmer just inside the door and stepped carefully to the corner by the bookshelves where he could see over the heads of the shorter people. Karen and Dave were sitting in front of Karen's father's desk with the board between them on their laps. |