OCR Text |
Show 219 drove along certain roads, stopped at certain beaches, ate at certain booths at the Farmer's Market, browsed at certain basket shops. She did of course know his arrangement with Yvonne had come apart, and professed the barest twinge of regret that her luring him away for milk to feed his ulcer had contributed, but just because two adults slipped off together for a minute and on an impulse ended up in bed (she went on, with pleasant inaccuracy), it didn't mean there was a commitment, for heaven's sake, did it? "I mean, she didn't have to go home with somebody else just to prove something. It's not as though we were suddenly in love with each other. I'm not. Are you?" He murmured of course not. He wished she would be quiet. They were on wet grass on a hill overlooking the San Diego Freeway, under a clouded moon, and something cold had just run over his leg, and he was imagining her pink and warm from the shower, nestled into downy sheets after locking him out on his screened porch with a sleeping bag and a towel. "I mean we may have been wrong to do i t in the first place," she said, "but if that's all it took to cause a breakup i t couldn't have been much of a relationship. She didn't have to break i t off, and I certainly don't feel guilty about what we've been doing since, even if I do feel a tiny bit guilty about the first time." She was smiling affectionately. Lorin grunted of course not. After a minute she said, "I don't know how much longer Floyd and I will be living together, for that matter. No, i t ' s not because of you, and no you don't look like him." Most of the time during those last weeks, though, he made his sentimental pilgrimages by himself, because you fondled sores to more purpose alone. He never drove by the Coach and Seven, never went to recover his few |