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Show 139 hanging lamps reading a newspaper, with his glasses pushed up onto his forehead. Lorin made directly for the refrigerator and poured a glass of half and half which he sat out of sight behind the counter to drink, listening to the discrete conversations at different tables under the flute music and feeling his shortness of breath. No one had better trifle with him tonight. He waited a long time and no one did. In fact once he started to work he had to admit the mood was surprisingly benign tonight, as though to soften him up. Voices remained quiet even as the place filled with customers. He liked it when he couldn't distinguish separate conversations any more and the sound drifted around the walls like smoke. The walls themselves looked clean in the dim light, and shadows thrown by the candles in wine bottles dipped and swam into each other each time the door opened, turning dark where they overlapped. People asked for undemanding things on the menu. Once he brought out a wrong order, herb tea instead of espresso, and the customer-he looked like an appliance salesman-said he'd rather have herb tea anyway. He put on the Bruckner Fourth Symphony and no one objected- he kept the volume low-and joined some people he knew for a few minutes at a table next to the stone fireplace that divided the room and they were glad to see him. He made Denver sandwiches for a middle-aged couple who had come in because they had never been in a coffee house before and the woman turned her pink candy face to him and thanked him and her husband asked intelligent questions about the paintings on the walls, including one of his. The folk singer came in a little after nine and politely waited until the record was over before unpacking his guitar and climbing onto his high stool across from the fireplace, and then he sang only quiet things and only to a private audience who pushed several tables together |