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Show 370 crept out of the phone booths and stood around the lobby pretending they weren't watching him, and talked about him in low voices. By eight o'clock he suspected he was going to be sick. If she answered now he was going to tell her to forget he'd ever called, he'd manage without her help, thanks anyway. He tried to dilute his stomach ache by drinking water from the fountain next to the restrooms, and tried the number three more times, at five-minute intervals, and the third time, just shy of eight-thirty, there was a click after the second ring, and a swollen pause between the click and the voice, during which he died a thousand deaths. A man's voice said, "Hello." "Is Gloriana there?" His own voice was strange in his ears. "No. You want to leave a message?" "I guess not. It's not important or anything. Maybe I can call her tomorrow if that's apt to be convenient for her all the same thanks." "Whatever," said the voice. There was a click, and Lorin was left holding a dead black bone to his ear, sticky with palm prints. He ran out of gas while he was still several blocks from her house and had to push the car to a curb. He wrote the name of the street and the number of the house he was in front of on the back of the ticket he had gotten in the Bullock's lot and walked the rest of the way in the dark, carrying his sleeping bag and his overnight case. He was worried about leaving all his possessions on display under a streetlight, but the important ones at least were locked in the trunk-his suitcases and portfolio and box of letters. The garment bag with his two other suits and a tweed sport jacket hung from a hook in the back seat-there was no room for it in the trunk and he would have had to wad it-and the back seat and |
