43
" There are our ghosts,' Smithers said.It was a word he liked to use, said Brewster. Like most of us Brewster had read a few ghost stories, and to him the word 'ghosts' summoned up the creaking floorboards of a haunted house, shrouded white figures gliding silently through darkness, fluttering robes moving of their own bodiless accord, strangely transparent coaches travelling swiftly down a midnight road, and other such images quite remote from the chanting and drumming of desert folk in gaudy garb, with jingling anklets and necklaces, under a hot fierce sun. But the sounds of the Thar came from some invisible source, and to Smithers they were sounds made by ghosts.(" Smithers And The Ghosts Of The Thar" ) "
44
" I do not know what inspires the image of a fish but it comes to me, wide eyed, open mouthed and gaping, glimmering, swimming towards me as though a creature of the darkness come to claim me. I imagine it in a twinkling blue pool. It swims through the dark currents of the sea, gliding above sea weed, beneath sunlight, augmenting and shying away from the surface. It belongs to this element between land and sky, sifts through it, a creature of the deep. My mind drifts, fades, but then comes back to the fish: its glimmering scales, its strange beady eyes. Its body is contained within the water. It opens its mouth, moving it open and closed as though it’s trying to speak a language I never learned. I think about the fish’s lungs, full of water. Is not the sea contained within the fish, too? "
― Annie Fisher , The Greater Picture
47
" So are you going to tell me why Ronowski pulled you into the break room when we got back today?” God asked watching Day closely.
Day shook his head at him, smiling wickedly. “It was about sex.”
“No fucking way. He came to you about sex?” God said, not hiding his shock.
“Who else is he going to ask…his priest?” Day said and quickly dodged the piece of garlic bread God threw at his head.
“Do I want to know?” God said.
“It wasn’t too bad. He wanted to know the best way to pleasure Johnson.” Day laughed when God balled up his face and made a gagging sound.
“There intimacy has been pretty one-sided from what I could understand. Ro was still pretty shy about telling me stuff, so I was mostly guessing.” Day wiped his mouth with his napkin before continuing. “Being the stud that I am…I gave the kid a few pointers.”
“Stud, huh?” God smiled.
“Yeah. I don’t mind taking the little tike under my homosexual wing and showing him how to fly.” Day grinned.
“You’re twisted. And isn’t Ro like the same age as you,” God said.
Day blew an exasperated breath. “Regardless of age, Cash. I have more experience. Way more. Way, way, way more experience with fucking men than anyone I—”
“I fucking got it, Leo.” God scowled at him.
Day laughed hysterically. “I told him all about how I make you scream my name every night.” Day chuckled and bolted up from his chair when God took off after him. Day ran back into the kitchen, jumping and gliding across the kitchen island on his hip and racing into the den. God was hot on his heels.
“I’ll catch you, you quick little bastard. And when I do, I’m going to show you just how loud I can make you scream,” God said in his sexy rough-hewn voice.
“Oh fuck.”
Day was laughing so hard he could barely just keep out of God’s grip. He dodged him in the living room, leaping over the coffee table heading fast toward the stairs when he was caught around his waist with a strong arm and dragged back down the two steps he’d cleared. "
― A.E. Via
50
" And when spring comes to the City people notice one another in the road; notice the strangers with whom they share aisles and tables and the space where intimate garments are laundered. going in and out, in and out the same door, they handle the handle; on trolleys and park benches they settle thighs on a seat in which hundreds have done it too. Copper coins dropped in the palm have been swallowed by children and tested by gypsies, but it’s still money and people smile at that. It’s the time of year when the City urges contradiction most, encouraging you to buy street food when you have no appetite at all; giving you a taste for a single room occupied by you alone as well as a craving to share it with someone you passed in the street. Really there is no contradiction—rather it’s a condition; the range of what an artful City can do. What can beat bricks warming up to the sun? The return of awnings. The removal of blankets from horses’ backs. Tar softens under the heel and the darkness under bridges changes from gloom to cooling shade. After a light rain, when the leaves have come, tree limbs are like wet fingers playing in woolly green hair. Motor cars become black jet boxes gliding behind hoodlights weakened by mist. On sidewalks turned to satin figures move shoulder first, the crowns of their heads angled shields against the light buckshot that the raindrops are. The faces of children glimpsed at windows appear to be crying, but it is the glass pane dripping that makes it seem so. "
― Toni Morrison , Jazz (Beloved Trilogy, #2)
