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Show I ll always embarrassed to be caught with food 1n her mouth. * * * * * * It was while lying naked in a dark room after making love, even unsatisfactory love, that you wondered how you would feel if a telegram came tomorrow saying your mother had died. You stared at the silhouette of the ripped awning outside the window and the leaves masking the streetlight across the road by the cemetery and you could hear her voice in your ear. It said, "Oh Lorin." It was a sad, disappointed voice, weary with having loved you all your life and from having read you stories at bedtime when you were small and wore jammies. You turned on your side and curled up in a ball, wishing that Yvonne were not lying there next to you breathing steadily and apt to wake up if you twisted around too much and remind you of your other problems. The guilt was more controllable, he had noticed, on days when you were horny. As soon as you weren't, especially at night, lying awake with your thoughts, you knew you had let everybody down and your hand stole to your dick and closed around it and you told yourself it would never rise again. Trying not to jiggle the bed, he moved as far away from Yvonne as he could so that if she woke up she would know he was avoiding her, and counted the ways his life was not happy. He had not enjoyed sex with her tonight very much, for one thing. He didn't know what was happening to their relationship, but sex with her tonight had not been a pleasure. There was no point in talking to her about it, because she was pretending everything was normal, and if he brought it up at breakfast she would smile and say something cheerful and not meet his eye. He was uneasy about the way the painting had gone the last little while too, and he suspected she had something to do with that. That was another thing. He had begun cheating, because |