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Show 209 shook him by the shoulder and t o ld him he mustn't go back to sleep, i t was very l a t e , he had better go home. She had put herself back together and was kneeling beside him with large worried eyes, tugging his pants up over his hips. He had been dreaming he was in a drugstore trying to select a greeting card from a rack that rotated on an axis, and someone kept rotating i t before he could make his choice. He took hold of the rack with both hands but i t turned anyway, and he started awake and saw her worried eyes. In a panic he asked what time i t was, but whatever she told him didn't register because he was consumed with the problem of getting his belt fastened and his f l y zipped. He got up and stumbled to the door. She followed him, her hands clasped anxiously in front of her until she had to unlock and open it for him. He heard her s o f t l y call goodnight as he made his way toward Simon's apartment, bumping into the r a i l at intervals. Simon's window was dark, with the curtain pulled closed, and Lorin by now had the presence of mind not to pound on the door with his f i s t . He put his watch up close to one eye and made out, through layers of wax paper, that i t said twenty minutes to four. He lurched to the staircase and crept down, holding onto the r a i l with both hands (the overhead l i g h t was burned out), walked into the coke machine in the arcade at the bottom, and ran across the courtyard to the street. He hadn't remembered hearing Gloriana's door close; she was probably s t i l l standing there watching his humiliation. He found his car under a s t r e e t l i g h t on the next block and drove home, steering across two or three lanes with one hand while digging the knuckles of the other into his eyes, and once nearly ramming a yellow Porsche stopped at the light where Wilshire crosses San Vicente. His breath was short by the time he pulled into his driveway and his hands had grown more fingers before he reached the front door and he despaired of finding a key that would f i t. |