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Show 138 probably be back before you are." "Why not?" he said. Andrea usually drove her out, too. Exactly what Andrea's problem tonight was he would not ask, not if he were standing on hot coals. He drove her back to the university at breakneck speed, speaking only to swear at every red light. He let her out at the parking circle without a word and she ran away across the lighted grass toward the gym without looking back. To teach her a lesson he did not go directly to the Coach and Seven but instead drove to the beach and sat on cold sand for a quarter of an hour watching breakers and left when three Mexican youths came up and asked him if he was a beatnik. He arrived at the Coach and Seven in time to see Noel being cute for the benefit of a group from the theater department who were sitting in a dark window-booth drinking mulled cider. Someone had put the scratchy record of Syrian flute music on the turntable and Noel was playing snake-charmer with a long-stemmed gilded rose. He held the stem between his knees under the table and swayed from side to side while the shiny flower, obviously confused, bobbed back and forth on its elastic stalk trying to synchronize its movements with its charmer's and finally sank in embarrassment, resting its head on the edge of the table, twitched once and dropped out of sight. Paul was talking at a corner table with a playwright named Malcolm somebody from Bakersfield, who lived around the corner on Sawtelle in a hotel that had weekly rates, and came in all the time to read over his one-act drafts by candlelight. Malcolm had a rusty mustache, and smoke curled through i t as he puffed his pipe. His white coffee mug was smudged by thumbprints, and so was his forehead. A few tables on the other side of the fireplace were occupied, mostly by students, and an elderly man in a green jacket stood under one of the dim |