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[...] Annette, had compelled Charles to think seriously. [...] She made him both soft and materialistic, a twofold demoralization, but one wholly in accordance with the standards of good society, good manners, and good taste.
[...] they said good night with a smile.
They fell asleep, to dream the same dream; and from that night Charles realized that there were still roses to be gathered in the world, and began to wear his mourning more lightly.
[...] Madame Grandet's life moved swiftly towards its close. Every day she grew feebler: like most women of her age she had no resistance to illness, and her strength ebbed rapidly. She had as frail a hold on life as the leaves now hanging in their fleeting autumn glory on the trees, and like the leaves when the sunlight strikes across and gilds them she shone with reflected light from heaven. [...]
While these events were taking place in Saumur, Charles was making his fortune in the East Indies. His first trading venture, to begin with, had been very successful, and he had quickly realized a sum of six thousand dollars. Crossing the line cured him of many prejudices; he perceived that the best way to make money in the tropics, as in Europe, was to buy and sell men; so he made a descent upon the coast of Africa and bargained for Negroes and other merchandise which could be profitably disposed of at the various markets his interests led him to. Flt had no thought or time to spare for anything but business. His one idea was to return to Paris clothed in all the glamour of great wealth, and to achieve a position there even more splendid than the one from which he had fallen.
oh no
She hadn’t noticed his arm on the back of her chair, how his hair brushed her shoulder when he filled her glass. Without any self-consciousness, without any consciousness at all, she had eased into the man’s presence. In the vestibules between cars he took her arm to steady her, drew her in to him when a mozo passed with luggage. She didn’t react to such intimacies, as she would have with any other man. She was simply enveloped.
This would never happen to her again. When she grew older she would always be in control, even when being submissive. This would be the first and last time anyone took over herself.
fun prolepsis
I freshened up the onion dips and chips and guacamole and went out on the steps. No one else was outside, and I was too depressed to call anybody to come see the unbelievable sunset. Is there a word opposite of déjà vu? Or a word to describe how I saw my whole future flash before my eyes? I saw that I’d stay at the Albuquerque National Bank and Bernie would get his doctorate and keep on painting bad paintings and making muddy pottery and would get tenure. We would have two daughters and one would be a dentist and the other a cocaine addict. Well, of course I didn’t know all that, but I saw how things would be hard. And I knew that years and years from then Bernie would probably leave me for one of his students and I’d be devastated but then would go back to school and when I was fifty I’d finally do things I wanted to do, but I would be tired.
inspo for the paramedics scene
He wasn’t handsome. Big. Red-haired with sort of buckteeth and a weak chin, a jutting brow over piercing beady eyes. Thick glasses, potbelly, beautiful hands. He was the sexiest man I ever knew. Women fell for him in a second; he’d slept with the entire Art Department. It was power and energy and vision. Not like a forward-looking vision, although he had that too. He saw everything. Details, light on a bottle. He loved seeing things, looking. And he made you look, made you go see a painting, read a book. Made you touch the eggplant, warm in the sun. Well, of course I had a wild crush on him too, who didn’t?
It wasn’t just that she was young. She had moved around all her life. Her father was a mining engineer; her mother had been ill, or crazy. She didn’t speak about them, except to say they had disowned her when she got married, wouldn’t answer her letters. You got the feeling no one had ever told her or shown her about growing up, about being part of a family or being a wife. That one reason she was so quiet was that she was watching, to see how it was all done.
The plane was so loaded down it barely got off the ground. When it finally did it took a god-awful time to get any altitude. Just missed the wires and then the cottonwoods at the river. The wings dipped a few times, and he wasn’t showing off. At last he was headed for Juarez and the tiny red taillight disappeared. I breathed and said thank God and drank.
I lay back down, shaking. I couldn’t bear it if Tyler were to crash. Just then the radio played “Silent Night,” which always gets me. I cried, just plain bawled my eyes out. It’s not true, what I said about him and Kate. I mind it a lot.
That was the extent of Maya’s objections. Gratitude was still a big part of her feeling toward Paul. Her first husband had left her when Sammy was nine months old and she was pregnant with Max. It had seemed like a miracle when Paul came along and loved Sammy and Max as well as her. She was determined to have a good marriage, to be a good wife. Still only nineteen, she had no idea what being a good wife meant. She did things like hold the hot part of the cup when she passed him coffee, offering him the handle.
noooo girl