Home > Work > Dearly Devoted Dexter (Dexter, #2)
41 " If everyone else in the world were to mysteriously disappear, I would feel irritated about it only because there would be no one to make me doughnuts. "
― Jeff Lindsay , Dearly Devoted Dexter (Dexter, #2)
42 " If I ever have to see something like that again," he told us, "I will retire and raise dachshunds. "
43 " You can use my phone, if you’ll pay the roaming charges,” I said.“I need a land line,” he said “A pay phone.”“You’re out of touch with the times,” I said. “A pay phone might be a little hard to find. Nobody uses them anymore. "
44 " It didn't seem like Sergeant Doakes would give up before my conversion to a beer-bellied sofa ornament was complete, and I could see nothing else to do except play kick the can and hangman with Cody and Astor, performing outrageously theatrical good-bye kisses with Rita afterward for the benefit of my stalker. "
45 " Deborah's little house was lavishly decorated in I-have-no-life modern. "
46 " As Deborah had so astutely pointed out, I was engaged and still didn't get it. "
47 " Was this what the human reproductive urge was like, a pointless and powerful desire to replicate wonderful, irreplaceable me, even when the me in question was a monster who truly had no right to live among humans? That would certainly explain how a great many of the monumentally unpleasant cretins I encountered every day came to be. "
48 " But of course, very few people are Dexter. This is generally a good thing, but in this case it came in handy to be me. Four months after reading a story in the paper about a missing boy, I read a similar story. The boys were around the same age; details like that always ring a small bell and send a Mister Rogers whisper trickling through my brain: “Hello, neighbor. "
49 " THERE ARE NIGHTS EVERY NOW AND THEN WHEN THE Dark Passenger really must get out to play. It's like walking a dog. You can ignore the barking and scratching at the door for only so long, and then you must take the beast outside. "
50 " Perhaps Dexter’s dutiful but uninspired brain pictured him as Sherlock Holmes, able to examine the wheel ruts and deduce that a left-handed hunchback with red hair and a limp had gone down the road carrying a Cuban cigar and a ukulele. I would find no clues, not that it mattered. "
51 " My life as an android was neat, balanced, and had real redeeming social value. "
52 " My life was every bit as fine as hers, so I ordered the same thing. Because we were regulars here, and had been coming here most of our lives, the aging, unshaven waiter snatched away our menus with a face that might have been the role model for Deborah's, and stomped off to the kitchen like Godzilla on his way to Tokyo. "
53 " Since I am not actually a real human being, my emotional responses are generally limited to what I have learned to fake. So I did not feel shock, outrage, anger, or even bitter resolve. They're very difficult emotions to do convincingly, and there was no audience to do them for, so why bother? But I did feel a slow cold wind from the Dark Backseat sweep up my spine and blow dry leaves over the floor of my lizard brain. "
54 " Ah, well,” I stammered, overcome by the absolute shocking effrontery and absurdity of it—were all human women crazy? "
55 " hospital. I would go see her tomorrow. In the meantime, I'd had a memorable but exhausting day; chased into a pond by a serial limb-barber, surviving a car crash only to be nearly drowned, losing a perfectly good shoe, and on top of all that, as if that wasn't bad enough, forced to buddy up with Sergeant Doakes. Poor Drained Dexter. No wonder I was so tired. I fell into bed and went to sleep at once. "
56 " the little toy piped on and into “London Bridge” in the same cheerfully lunatic tone. It was enough to make anyone crazy, but it probably had an extra effect on someone like MacGregor who lived for children. At any rate, I certainly hoped so. I had quite deliberately chosen the little keyboard to lure him out, and I sincerely hoped, in fact, that he would think he had been found out—and that a toy had come from Hell to punish him. After all, why shouldn’t I enjoy what I do? "
57 " Vince had answered the door in a body-hugging satin gown with a basket of fruit on his head. “J. Edgar Hoover?” I asked him. "
58 " He looked natural and unrushed, and had obviously had a lot of experience at either chicanery or skulduggery, depending on which word was better suited for describing officially sanctioned mischief. "
59 " No, you don't understand. She told me to get you back. She's made up her mind and I don't dare disobey. She hits very hard. "
60 " Doakes was gone. One small piece at a time he was leaving my life and releasing me from the involuntary servitude of Rita's couch. I could live again. "