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Show 214 went for breakfast at a place in the Cannery. He l e f t late Sunday night and drove back to Los Angeles, exiting 101 just in time to catch the heaviest part of commuter-hour t r a f f i c . He was back in the Village by ten o'clock, his head grainy from lack of sleep and the long drive, and he climbed the stairs to the apartment ripe for a quarrel and pushed open the door just in time to hear Shannon shriek. The small ante-room just inside the door, that contained a couch that folded into a bed, was Shannon's room. Expecting no one home at that hour, Lorin had burst in and surprised Shannon-unless he was mistaken in the glimpse he had caught before the covers were suddenly yanked over both heads and both quivering bodies-in bed with a g i r l . He tiptoed the rest of the way into the apartment and closed the door to Shannon's room behind him. Everything else had been upended lately. He should not be surprised now. He crawled into Harry's bed for a nap and drifted to sleep listening to nervous whispers on the other side of the door. Late in the afternoon he returned the sleeping bag to the girls in the next apartment and thanked them so effusively and described his disappointed trip with i t over the weekend so beguilingly that pretty soon i t was supper-time, and afterward they offered to let him use i t on their floor that night. They made jokes about which one was going to slip into i t with him while he was asleep, but as neither did he stayed awake a long time to no purpose. During the week he was there he used the typewriter belonging to the one who taught high school to write a formal letter to the management of the Coach and Seven announcing his withdrawal from the partnership and his relief to be through with all the fraudulent intellecutals and bad artists and creeps and hypocrites and junkies and friends who stabbed you in the back while they were making you seltzers and the dirty floors and the greasy stove. It looked intemperate when he read i t over and he worried that the bank |
