« You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place
like this at this time of the morning. »
« You are awed by his strict refusal to acknowledge any
goal higher than the pursuit of pleasure. You want to be like that. You
also think he is shallow and dangerous. »
« This cousin had a girlfriend with cheekbones to break
your heart, and you knew she was the real thing when she steadfastly refused to
acknowledge your presence. She possessed secrets – about islands, about horses,
about French pronunciation – that you would never know. »
« Her voice, for instance, which is like the New Jersey
State Anthem played through an electric shaver. »
« She looks at you as if you had just suggested
instrumental rape. »
« You are a republic of voice tonight. »
« Mortality will pierce you through the retina. »
« The sexual equivalent of fast food. »
« Have you ever
noticed how all the good words start
with D ? D and L. »
« Across the water, a huge Colgate sign welcomes you to
New Jersey, the Garden State. »
« You hate to support this kind of trash with your
thirty cents, but you are a secret fan of Killer Bees, Hero Cops, Sex Fiends,
Lottery Winners, Teenage Terrorists, Liz Taylor, Tough Tots, Sicko Creeps,
Living Nightmares, Life on Other Planets, Spontaneous Human Combustion, Miracle
Diets and Coma Babies. »
« The dread of not havong finished your homework – and
where were you going to si tat lunch ? It didn’t help being the new kid
every year. The stale disinfectant smell of the corridors and the hard faces of
teachers. »
« Clara has a
mind like a steel mousetrap and a heart like a twelve-minute egg. »
« Generally people here speak as if they were weaned on
Twinings English Breakfast Tea. »
« His speek is Sunbelt Swish – a lisp on a twang,
occasionally supplemented by feigned R and L confusion, particularly when he
has a chance to use the phrase ‘President-elect.’ His mother is Japanese, his
father an Air Force Captain out of Houston. They married in Tokyo during the
Occupation, and Yasu Wade is the unlikely result. »
« He is Clara’s favorite, not counting Ritenhouse, who
is naturally adapted to his environment as to be invisible. »
« The guardian of the apertures, the priestess of
Webster’s Second Edition Unabridged Dictionary, eagle eyes and beagle nose. She
gives you a look that could break glass, and then steps out. She’s going to let
you suffer for a while. »
« In fact, you don’t want to be in Fact. You’d much
rather be in Fiction. »
« You are the kind of guy who always hopes for a
miracle at the last minute. Manhattan does not lie in an earthquake zone, but
there is always the possibility of nuclear war. Short of that, nothing you can
imagine would alter the publishing schedule. »
« Perhaps because he suspects he is mortal, fiction
that deals too directly with death is unwelcome here ; most references to
myopia are edited out. »
« How do you know anything’s real ? »
« Your eyelids feel as if they are being held open by
taxidermy needles. »
« Jesus wept. »
« This is the way it goes with the writers : they
resent you to the degree that they depend on you. »
« Two of the things you like about Allagash are that he
never asks you how you are and he never waits for you to answer his
questions. »
« You have friends who actually care about you and
speak the language of the inner self. You have avoided them of late. Your soul
is as disheveled as your apartment, and until you can clean it up a little you
don’t want to invite anyone inside. »
« You feel like a student who is handing in a term
paper that is part plagiarism, part nonsense and half finished. »
« You thought of
yourself in the third person. »
« Something changed. Something along the line you
stopped accelerating. »
« Her complaint is refreshing, like rain at the end of
a muggy day. »
« You walk to the elevator and press the Down
button. »
« You see yourself as the kind of guy who appreciates a
quiet night at home with a good book. A little Mozart on the speakers, a cup of
cocoa on the arm of the chair, slippers on the feet. Monday night. It feels
like Thursday, at least. »
« A man’s home, after all, is his castle. »
« Nothing seems to be what you want to do until you
consider writing. Suffering is supposed to be the raw stuff of art. »
« You have always wanted to be a writer.
« Then your night life started getting more interesting
and complicated, and climbing out of bed became harder and harder. You were
gathering experience for a novel. You went to parties with writers, cultivated
a writerly persona. »
« The whiteness of the sheet is intimidating, so you
type the date in the right-hand corner. »
« Screw this. You are not going to commit any great
literature tonight. »
« Did you know that ninety percent of you average
household dust is composed of human epidermal matter ? That’s skin, to
you.
Perhaps this explains your sense of Amanda’s omnipresence.
She has left her skin behind. »
« Have you ever experienced this nearly overwhelming
urge for a quiet night at home ? »
« Along the bar are faces familiar under artificial
light, belonging to people whose daytime existence is only a tag-designer,
writer, artist. »
« You hate this posturing, even as you persist, as if
it were important for these two strangers to admire you for all the wrong
reasons. It’s not much, this menial job in a venerable institution, but it’s
all you’ve got left. »
« When you were growing up you suspected that everyone
else had been let in on some fundamental secret which was kept from you. »
« Not the tits – the cheeks. She’s got fucking silicone
implants to make it look like she has cheekbones. »
« Being still unable to think the worst of her, you
need other people to think it and speak it for you. »
« You think of Socrates, the kind of guy who accepted
his cup and drank it down. More than this, you cling to the hope that you will
somehow escape your fate. »
« The boa constrictor wrapped around your heart eases
its grip. »
« The new writing will be about technology, the global
economy, the electronis ebb and flow of wealth. »
« Twenty-four. Your whole life ahead of you. »
« You had lived on both coasts and abroad ; the
heartland was until then a large blank. You felt that some kind of truth and
American virtue lurked thereabouts, and as a writer you wanted to tap into
it. »
« You education daunted and excited her. Her desire to
educate herself was touching. She asked about the day your book would be
published. »
« Amanda’s need to belong was part of her
attraction. »
« Growing up meant admitting you couldn’t have
everything. »
« The first time she went to Italy for the fall
showings, she cried at the airport. She reminded you that in a year and a half
you had never spent a night apart. »
« There was always something elusive about her, a
quality you found mysterious and unsettling. »
« You believe your filial duty is to appear happy and
prosperous. It is the last you can do for him after all he’s done for you. You
don’t want him to feel bad, and as it is, he has plenty to worry about. »
« Agency policy is to treat all male callers as
potential rapists until proven legitimate. »
« In your mind images of revenge and carnage do battle
with scenes of tender reconciliation. »
« Read Hazlitt and rite before breakfast every day.
Advie to last a lifetime. »
« Everything becomes symbol and irony when you have
been betrayed. »
« Everywhere you look you see the Missing
Person. »
« Above Forty-second they sell women without clothes
and below they sell clothes with women. »
« Much as you dislike your apartment, it has a bed in
it. »
« You were even thinking you might take some Dickens to
bed with you. Run your mind over someone else’s pathetic misadventures for a
change. »
« A well-bred young woman, something of an intellect,
who would not be charmed by some junior account exec with toothpaste market
surveys on the brain. »
« Her face is intelligent. The hair is somewhere
between strawberry and gold, you can’t tell in this light. »
« Her voice is like gravel spread with honey. She holds
a smile just long enough to encourage you and then returns to her book. »
« You think of Plato’s pilgrims climbing out of the
cave, from the shadow world of appearances toward things as they really are,
and you wonder if it is possible to change in this life. Being with a
philosopher makes you think. »
« I’d like to have the kind of house someday where a
carousel horse wouldn’t be out of place in the living room. »
« You see yourself watching from the bluff, through a
time warp, saying : Someday I will meet this girl. You want to watch over
her through the interval, protect her from the cruelty of schoolchildren and
the careless lust of young men. The irrevocable past tense of the narration
suggests to you some intervening tragedy. You suspect a snake in the vegetable
garden. »
« You love the way she raises her water glass to her lips,
the ease she has with her hands and mouth. You are afraid you are staring too
intently into her eyes, even though this intimacy does not appear
uninvited. »
« You will miss his bow ties and his Edwardian
bookkeeper manner. »
« Think of all this as an illusion. She can’t hurt you.
Nothing can hurt the samourai who enters combat fully resolved to die. You have
already accepted the inevitability of termination, as they say. »
« You hate hospitals and doctors. The smell of
denatured alcohol nauseates you. »
« ‘Weren’t you suspicious when you saw the sign on her
forehead ?’
‘Which sign was that ?’
‘The one that said, Space to Let. Long and Short Term
Leasing.’
‘We met in a bar. It was too dark to read.’
‘Not so dark that she couldn’t see you were her ticket out
of Trailer Park Land. Bright lights, big city. »
« The woman seems to be an ethnic group unto herself.
She has no eyebrows or eyelashes and her hairline is extremely high, not far
from the top of her skull. »
« But what you are left with is a premonition of the
way your life will fade behind you, like a book you have read too quickly,
leaving a dwindling trail of images and emotions, until all you can remember is
a name. »
« You take a book from the desk and hand it to Megan.
‘Could you give this to Alex for me ? Tell him it’s one of the Young
Turks.’ She takes the book. »
« In the examination of personal libraries is an entire
hermeneutics of character analysis. »
« You hope the conversation improves. A few minutes ago
you were colleagues headed out for a bite to eat. Now you are a man and a woman
alone in a room with a bed. »
« Megan says that we all project our needs onto others,
and that others aren’t always capable of fulfilling them. »
« You are mostly in the tub. Only your feet stick out,
way down at the far end of your body. It’s not uncomfortable, really, except
that you are a little dampa round the midsection. You will have to investigate
this. Find the source. In a minute.
The door opens. Help is on the way. »
« Please excuse my lapse from gentlemanly
comportment. »
« Short honeymoon, long divorce. »
« Underneath her eyes she has painted two purple
streaks suggestive of cheekbones. »
« You have always thought that Michael would make a
great prosecuting attorney. He has an acute sense of universal guilt and a keen
nose for circumstantial evidence. Although he is a year younger than you, he
has appropriated the role of elder. He takes your foibles and lapses from good
citizenship as personal affronts. »
« Omniscience must be a terrible burden, Michael. How
do you bear it ? »
« Under the spell of alcohol your differences
recede. »
« You described the feeling you’d always had of being
misplaced, of always standing to one side of yourself, of watching yourself in
the world even as you were being in the world, and wondering if this was how
everyone felt. That you always believed that other people had a clearer idea of
what they were doing, and didn’t worry quite so much about why. »
« She’s wearing toreador pants and a silver flak jacket.
Beside her, a Mediterranean hulk in a white silk shirt emanates a proprietary
air. »
« The man looks like he was carved by Praxiteles in 350
B.C and touched up by Paramount in 1947. You wonder if the physique is
functional or cosmetic. How well would he respond if you ripped his ears
off ? »
« She says, ‘Ciao bello,’ and before you can react she
kisses your cheek.
Is she out of her mind ? Doesn’t she know that you
desist from strangling her only through the exercise of heroic
restraint ? »
« As you approach, the smell of bread washes over you
like a gentle rain. »
« You get down on your knees and tear open the bag. The
smell of warm dough envelops you. The first bite sticks in your throat and you
almost gag. You will have to go slowly. You will have to learn everything all
over again. »
Bright Lights, Big City – Jay McInerney
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