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Carrie took the class through cool-down, a slow stretch, and a couple of yoga moves and then let them sprawl on the floor like casualties on a battlefield She turned theout of the rooh a doorway just belowher at the water fountain just outside the locker rooms Her hair fell across her shoulders like a nun’s veil and she had to gather it in a knot and hold it to one side so she could drink without getting it wet

"Carrie?"

She straightened up, blotting a trickle of sith the sleeve of her leotard, the towel around her neck now, like a fighter just out of the ring "That’s right"

I told her who I was and what I was doing and then asked her if we could talk about Bobby Callahan

"All right, but we’ll have to do it while I clean up I have to be somewhere at noon"

I followed her through a door and into the locker rooht that circled the perimeter about halfway, banks of metal lockers, a line of hair dryers mounted on the wall The tile was a pristine white and the place was spotless, with benches an-cfcored to the floor,sogle in frohter, I kneould rise as the room filled

Carrie kicked off her shoes and peeled her leotard down like a banana skin I busiedfor a place to perch As a rule, I don’t interview naked ladies in a roo strippers I noticed that they sht that was nice

I waited while she tucked her hair up under a plastic cap and went into the showers In the es of undress It was a coht So many versions of the female breast, of buttocks and bellies and pubic nests, endless repetitions of the saood about the the, wrapped in a towel She pulled her shower cap off and gave her darktoto the funeral, but I just couldn’t handle it Did you go?"

"Yeah, I went I hadn’t known Bobby long, but it was tough You were dating him when he had the accident, weren’t you?"

"Actually, we’d just broken up We dated two years and then things went sour I got pregnant, as, and that was the end of it He paid for the abortion, but eren’t seeing ot hurt, but I stayed away I know people thought I was a real cold fish, but what could I do? It was over I couldn’t see hovering around hiood"

"Did you hear any talk about the accident?" "Just that soht have been or why?" She sat down on a bench and hauled a foot up, drying carefully between her toes "Well, yes and no Not who really, but I know so on with hio with me when I had the abortion and he stayed real close for a couple of days" She switched feet, bending to inspect her toes "I worry about athletes foot," she ot up, crossing to a locker, taking out clothes She glanced at ht because I don’t really have any facts Just an i so it was blackmail"

"Blackmail?"

"Well, yes, but not in any ordinary sense Ihands or anything like that It wasn’t sinister cloak-and-dagger stuff So on soathered he’d been trying to help and he’d just figured out how to do it…" She pulled on her underpants and then an undershirt I guess she figured her breasts weren’t big enough to worry with a bra

"When was this?" I asked "Do you remember the date?"

"Well, I know I had the abortion on Noveht The accident was the day after that, I think, the night of the seventeenth, so it was all in that sah the newspaper starting in Septe public Did you get any i place? I mean, I don’t even knohat to look for"