>> <<
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Ginnie was, in fact, slightly put off by this information, whatever its degree of truth, but not to the point of sentimentality. <<
When Selena had rung her apartment bell, the girls were admitted--or rather, the door was drawn in and left ajar--by a colored maid with whom Selena didn't seem to be on speaking terms. Ginnie dropped her tennis things on a chair in the foyer and followed Selena. In the living room, Selena turned and said, <<
I may have to wake Mother up and everything.>>>
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<<>> but not quite brave enough to emphasize it.
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She looked around the room, mentally rearranging furniture, throwing out table lamps, removing artificial flowers. In her opinion, it was an altogether hideous room--expensive but cheesy.
Suddenly, a male voice shouted from another part of the apartment, <<
A young man wearing glasses and pajamas and no slippers lunged into the room with his mouth open. <<
Ginnie stared at him. <<
He was staring down, with his slack mouth ajar, at his injured finger. <<
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Selena's brother carried his wound slightly forward from his chest and unveiled it for Ginnie's benefit. <<
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Selena's brother turned back to his finger, obviously for him the true and only focal point in the room. <<>> Ginnie arched her back.
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Ginnie was silent. <<
No answer.
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Selena's brother said. This had the stature of an interesting answer, in Ginnie's secret opinion.
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Ginnie took full advantage of his having looked up. <<
Ginnie snorted.
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He nodded in agreement. <<
Ginnie watched him for a minute. <<
As though responding to an electric shock, Selena's brother pulled back his uninjured hand. He sat up a trifle straighter--or rather, slumped a trifle less. He looked at some object on the other side of the room. An almost dreamy expression came over his disorderly features. He inserted the nail of his uninjured index finger into the crevice between two front teeth and, removing a food particle, turned to Ginnie. <<
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Ginnie shook her head. <<>> <<>> <<
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Absently, he bent over and scratched his bare ankle. <<
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Ginnie giggled. She watched him scratch his ankle till it was red. When he began to scratch off a minor skin eruption on his calf with his fingernail, she stopped watching.
<<
Ginnie waited, but nothing led away from this statement. <<
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<<>> From his breast pajama pocket he two-fingered out a cigarette that looked as tho
ugh it had been slept on. <<
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He turned to her wearily. <<
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Ginnie giggled. <<
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Ginnie briefly held her fire. Very briefly. <<
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<<>>
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He heard her. He put his left foot up on the window seat and rested his injured hand on the horizontal thigh. He continued to look down at the street. <<
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<<>> <<
<<>> Ginnie nodded.
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In a few seconds, he was back, bringing the sandwich half.
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Ginnie accepted the sandwich half. <<
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Ginnie took a bite.
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Ginnie swallowed with difficulty. <<
Selena's brother nodded. He looked absently around the room, scratching the pit of his chest. <<
Left alone, Ginnie looked around, without getting up, for a good place to throw out or hide the sandwich. She heard someone coming through the foyer. She put the sandwich into her polo-coat pocket.
A young man in his early thirties, neither short nor tall, came into the room. His regular features, his short haircut, the cut of his suit, the pattern of his foulard necktie gave out no really final information. He might have been on the staff, or trying to get on the staff, of a news magazine. He might have just been in a play that closed in Philadelphia. He might have been with a law firm.
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Yet he used them as if they had some not easily controllable aesthetic drive of their own. <<th from the laundry. And on top of it all-->>> The young man broke off. <<
The young man nodded thoughtfully and backed off toward his chair. <<
<<
And part of January. Usually I go down with her, but this has been such a messy year I simply couldn't get away.>>> <<
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He nodded. <<
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The young man suddenly began brushing the cuffs of his trousers with the flat of his hand. <<>> <<
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During the war, we both worked at the same horrible place, and that boy would insist on dragging me to the most impossible pictures in the world. We saw gangster pictures, Western pictures, musicals-->
Nine Stories Page 4