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Show 362 then he had driven away. It was a strange way to have seen the last of someone you used to be naked with. He shifted on his bench and watched a game of volleyball down on the beach for a while, then watched the breakers roll in. It was a cool day- a light wind rattled the palm fronds over his head-and there weren't many people down there. The few he could see seemed to be mothers with small children or elderly men or long-haired young people huddled in clusters playing bongo drums. He wondered what Alice was doing now, and glanced at his watch to see what time it would be in Ypsilanti. He was sorry he had made things difficult for her, and thought he might write her a letter sometime. He found himself hoping she hadn't lost her testimony because of him. He wondered if she and Richard had made love yet or if he had ruined that too. The glance at his watch had told him he was putting off the afternoon's confrontations. He saw the doorman disappear around a corner with someone's dog on a leash, and decided he would try the hotels next. By three in the afternoon he had gone to five of the big ones along Wilshire between Santa Monica and Beverly Hills, and suspected he had made a fool of himself. He was fairly selective in the kind of job he applied for-he would not be a doorman because people sneered at you from across the street, but he wouldn't mind being, say, a desk clerk. In his navy-blue suit he even looked a little like a desk clerk, he thought. One of the hotels had a gift shop, a brokerage office, a clothing store, and an airline ticket office in the lobby, so he steeled himself and went to each of them too, though he hadn't been sure what to say he was applying for in the brokerage office. It was a torture going to each of these places, but you didn't spend eighteen months selling a religion to strangers without learning something about getting past things that traumatized you. |
