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Show 95 long. Oh why not, she said. Cynthia was a girl in his three-dimensional design class who had fragile-looking elbows and long fingers that she never seemed able to scrub the paint from. Lorin did not consider her very pretty but she had always been friendly to him and he understood she sometimes went to bed with people. He took a fast shower and left before Yoram could ask him where he was going, and he avoided Mrs. Withers by ducking into the Baptist office when he heard her coming down the hallway. He had never bought wine before, and was not sure what kind to ask for, and he went to three liquor stores in the Village before he found one on Wilshire where the clerk would sell him a bottle without asking his age. The beard helped, he decided. Carrying a gallon jug of something in a brown bag, he drove out to the trailer court on Santa Monica Boulevard, wandered among strange trailers, many of them with small gardens, until he found the right one. He mounted the wooden steps and knocked on the door, feeling short of breath and wondering what he would say if somebody else were already there. When the door opened he darted a glance past her but saw only Venetian blinds and an open cupboard, then he looked down at her and smiled. She was wearing dirty levis and a T-shirt, and looked shapeless, like a narrow marshmallow. She smiled and stepped aside to let him in. She had noticed the size of the brown bag he was carrying, and when he took the bottle out to set it on the table she said, "Good Lord, were you planning to get us both swacked?" "It seemed a night for dissipation," he said. He hoped that that had the right balance of ambiguity to it, but he was aware he had less control over his voice than usual. "Oh, it did?" she said, and laughed. He felt his face burn, but he would see this through. "Anyway, I |