Discrete dating for married people“Maybe,” I said. There’s something between you two? It would persist— he could no longer get away from it — yet he didn’t have the faintest idea what it was. He was hooked. Perhaps the suitcases contained something that would give him a clue? He tore them open, pulled out the articles one by one, and scattered them over the chairs. Underwear, suits, toiletries, shoes; some items were still quite new or hardly used. It seemed as if the dead man had recently kitted himself out, everything seemed quite impersonal, just like any other man’s wardrobe, as if the dead man didn’t want to betray himself. Sponer searched through all the pockets, looking for letters, but found nothing, and then he remembered the mail they’d given him when he arrived at the hotel, and he had already forgotten what he’d done with it, but finally he found it in the entrance hall on the sofa where he’d thrown it. He first tore open the telegrams, read two incomprehensible and obviously coded messages in English, chucked them aside, opened one of the letters and, while searching with his free hand in his jacket pocket for cigarettes, lowered himself onto the edge of the sofa and began to study the letter, all the while continuing to fumble unsuccessfully for his cigarettes. However, he didn’t understand the letter as he didn’t know much English. He tore open the second, which, like the two in Mortimer’s wallet, was again signed with a W, and deduced it was another love letter. He returned to the salon, looked to see whether perhaps he’d thrown the cigarette packet away somewhere, and in the meantime removed the dead man’s wallet and compared the handwriting of the old letters with the new one; it was the same. However, he didn’t continue reading, because not being able to find his cigarettes infuriated him suddenly. He hadn’t been in needof a smoke at all so far; now, however, he was all of a sudden dying for one and, unable to find his cigarettes, he blew his top. Swearing furiously, he rushed to the door and rang for the waiter. No, it’s just the way it is, he says, almost sternly. “Did you make use of the thirty-thousand francs?” He rolled up the mouth of the pack and took custody, oblivious to how suspicious this looked, to how suspicious the entire transaction had looked, because Minister Lawless was quite without shame, though it took me a while to get my head around that, shame being one of mankind’s founding principles, as depicted in the story of Adam and Eve diving for their fig leaves. To be without shame was, to me, akin to being without thoughts or emotions. I didn’t see how a human could be a human without it. And then I met Ray. Let’s check if she has a belly button. Wild Ones don’t have belly buttons. Does the man the leg belonged to know it’s haunting you? discrete dating for married people ‘Look at the little fecker,’ he said, shaking his head in disapproval. ‘His skin all black and slimy like the Devil’s. The holes instead a ears, as if his real ears got burnt off in a fire. The sneaky little bollockses duck out a sight before you can get a proper look at them. Seals are disgustin if you think about them for too long.’ He turned to me. ‘D’ya know what I mean, Tristram?’ We’ve come here mostly to bum a cup of coffee, not to listen to such…such…crap, if I’m going to be completely honest. “Excuse me, miss,” a man said. “I really must paint your portrait …” she said to me. I had a premonition of this axiom, observed a thousand times since:“Every customer seen is a customer lost”. If somebody encountered me accidentally in the shop, then I spoke, I prattled away, out of shyness; escaping through chit-chat: how many windbags, mocked for their self-assurance, are simply quiet people who, deep down, are frightened of silence. Hei?ur: It’s a thank-you note. I thought it was an overly formal Dardanelle, but when I pulled the door open Marcia Pinkney stood there. I had forgotten her completely. The mourners were filing in by then. You could hear the din of their conversation and sporadic laughter. The people who attended the funerals of our kind were given to laughter and tears, alcohol and drugs, violent outbursts and deep depression. Where are you going? says Bett?. I was breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth. My thoughts kept flitting off in tangents about Coco Manetti and my brother— Cornell.. |