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Show 428 was after hours, so he could park free-and got out and sat on a bench to wait. He felt conspicuous in his grey suit, but it was nearly dusk, and presently he wouldn't be noticeable. He reflected that he had experienced two links with his past on the same day and had handled himself very well, except for the small embarrassment with Maxine. It was just as well that Maxine had declined, because she would have asked questions out of politeness and he would have had to rake up old fires, which would have interfered with the work he wanted to do that night. Evening smells drifted across the stream of cars that now had their headlights on, and it was pleasant to remember that most of his enemies were still young. He was able to distinguish the eucalyptus and ocean smells, and from somewhere the sweet odor of cut grass, and the inexplicable smell of fried meat, and the smell of pink light off a cloud bank in the west; and then something horrible happened. He had been watching a girl in a miniskirt cross the lawn at the bottom of the brick steps at the distant end of the lower quad, where the turf sloped down into a wide shallow bowl. She was heading toward the women's gym and for the moment was alone on the dark grass. She had a book bag slung over a shoulder and was barefoot, and her hair kept blowing into her face. She was too far away for Lorin to see her face reliably, or even to know if the pleasant lust he felt at the sight of her quick bare thighs was justified, but he liked watching the way she enjoyed her own visibility, alone, blue and yellow against a landscape of black pine trees and brick steps and serpentine concrete paths flanked with lamp poles whose globes were starting to flicker on. As he watched, her head came off and floated gently behind her, the long hair still fluttering, until the appalling torso had taken a few steps out of range, and then it dropped to the grass and rolled into a low spot behind one of the concrete benches. |
