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JOHN D. MacDONALD
The funeral was a wretched affair. I suppose it was done as tastefully as one would expect. But great gaudy swarms of Gloria’s friends from the television industry came up from the Los Angeles area. They were dressed sedately, but still managed to seem like flocks of bright birds, men and women alike, their eyes bright and sharp and questing.
They had been at the inquest too, turning out in numbers which astonished the officials. I had not been surprised. If I learned any one thing from my marriage, it was that those people are incurably gregarious. They had absolutely no appreciation of privacy and decorum. Their ceaseless talk is like the chatter of birds, and largely incomprehensible to the outsider.
After the funeral I settled a few final details before going away. The lawyer had me sign the necessary things. Gloria had managed to squirrel away more than I expected, and she had invested it very shrewdly indeed. My own affairs were in a temporary lull. Bernard, at the gallery, made the usual apology about not being able to move more of my work, and offered his condolences, for the tenth time. I closed the Bay house and flew to the Islands.
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