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Show 216 you look like a martyr, and he did not want to give her that satisfaction. Accordingly, when he was not busy making himself miserable by visting old haunts or looking for a place to spend the night he played happy games with Gloriana, and those made him miserable too. In fact this was how he met her roommate finally. They were eating sandwiches and drinking French onion soup from coffee mugs on her couch one afternoon while he was still living in his car, when they heard a key in the lock and the door suddenly opened. There were few sounds that stopped your heart like the businesslike thrust of a key in the lock when you were on the other side of a door where you shouldn't be. Lorin felt pale but forced himself to look up. The roommate stopped when he saw them, then came in and closed the door while Lorin stared. It was, incidentally, the merest chance that they had not been handling each other at that instant, in fact that they were seated at opposite ends of the couch, Lorin with his feet on the coffee table and Gloriana with hers tucked under her. A few minutes earlier while the soup was still too hot to drink he had been browsing the inside of her thigh while she had held her skirt up and had sat with her head thrown back, her breath coming in catches. A narrow miss like that triggered good intentions, and for the length of time it took Gloriana to manage introductions and Lorin to lay his soup on the table and rise to shake hands he made wild promises to himself never to come here again. She seemed flustered herself, but the introductions went smoothly enough-Floyd, Lorin; Lorin, Floyd-and by the time Lorin had finished shaking hands and realized he was staring he was satisfied there would be no rudeness or violence. He could not, however, forbear staring during the brief conversation that followed. Floyd wore a checked yellow shirt open at the throat and a green golf sweater. He had worn a cloth cap when he came in, which now |