It was probably a combination of everything when I saw the firstinmate who was in a little black dress all of a sudden strutted out intothe middle of... the courtyard sashaying his way up and down the Courtyardseemingly on autopilot. What the heck was happening to us?Then one by one as we hit this spotlight every newly dressed girl put ontheir best runway strut like we were at a Paris fashion show. It wasactually pretty incredible because all the inmates now had no issueswalking in these high. Maybe she had peeked out at the gray sky and slid back into bed and snuggled up to whomever she had slept with. It was sure that she had someone to sleep with. The young and strong, the beautiful, those who were sure of themselves, never worried about loneliness. They could choose solitude or togetherness when and with whom they wished. He pictured her snuggling with her lover, or husband, or husband-lover, thinking about the next steps the snuggling might lead to. After a while he rounded the. "I gathered this was the director, apparently named Alvie, and he probably wasn't ready to share his views on the upcoming elections. So the prudent thing was oops and split. Ah, prudence. Never met the girl."Um, Mr ... Alvie?" I spoke up with some hesitation. "I know I don't belong here, but now that I am, could I look around if I stay out of the way? I won't be any trouble and I'm really curious about all this."He focused on me for the first time. "Why? Who do you work for? Who sent you to. Their expression was friendly, with a hint of amusement. But what was making it difficult for Marie to breathe was the overwhelming sense she had, from the way he was looking at her, that this man knew her—knew her in a way nobody else did; knew her better than she knew herself. She knew who he was, though not by name. This was his store and he was usually there. He had often been at the register when she had bought books so there had been the kind of brief exchanges that.