Annette Valentine

“If Miss Nameless minded, she wasn't letting on. And if her name was really Frances, I didn't find out. The evening went a different direction from there. The music was still going like notes from a faraway horn, and her hands were all over me. That's what I remembered.

Light shone through the gap in the curtain, through which people came and went - night after cheap, careless night, most likely - to the room on the other side.

In the end, I was back there, alone.”
― Annette Valentine, Eastbound from Flagstaff: A Novel

“The shameful sensation was still lodged in my brain when I awakened. That and the urge to get up and slither out of the mess I'd let Detroit's nightlife make of me.”
― Annette Valentine, Eastbound from Flagstaff: A Novel

“With no more than enough money to ride the streetcar home, I closed the door and was out of the speakeasy into the alley on a day not yet light, hoping to resurrect the farm boy that had grown up with country-loving decency.”
― Annette Valentine, Eastbound from Flagstaff: A Novel

“I flung the pages of the letter into the air and watched them flutter aimlessly to the floor, and dad's make-believe hopes with them. I went to the washstand, poured every drop of cold water into the bowl, and glared at the man in the mirror, wanting to growl at the resemblance to my father. I let my hands soak, drowning what was possible to drown, than dried them and changed my clothes, put on a tie, and brushed my hair till my head hurt. When I walked out the door to go down for dinner, I looked like a new man. Cottage pie sounded terrific.”
― Annette Valentine, Eastbound from Flagstaff: A Novel