Bonnie

“The rain beat against the windows and against the tin roof of the hotel. It came down in hissing roars, then in whispers, then in loud shishes like sandpaper rubbed against wood. She drank the second glassful, climbed off the bed and began undressing, and then we were together, the cheap naked bulb still blazing down on the bed.

Thinking back, I remember the stupidest things; the way there was a taut crease just above her hips, in the small of her back. The way she smelled like a baby's breath, a sweet barely there smell that retreated and retreated, so that no matter how close you got to it you weren't sure it was there. The brown speckles in the lavender-gray eyes, floating very close to the surface when I kissed her, the eyes wide open and aware. But not caring. The eyes of a gourmet offered a stale chunk of bread, using it of necessity but not tasting it any more than necessary.

I remember getting up and coming back to her, and of throwing a shoe at the light bulb, later, when the whisky was gone. I remember the smell of rain-darkness in the room and her telling me I'd cut my feet on the light-bulb glass on the floor. And how she said I was no better than a tramp myself, that I made love to the cadence of the raingusts on the roof, and it was true I was doing just that, but it seemed the natural thing then. And I felt so marvelously clean and soaped and so in tune with the whole damned universe that I had the feeling I could have clouded up and rained and lightninged myself, and blown that cheese-colored room to smithereens.”
― Elliott Chaze, Black Wings Has My Angel

“It's difficult to be truly serious when you're in a city that can't even put up a skyscraper for fear the earth will start up one day and bring the whole thing down around everyone's ears.”
― Eve Babitz, Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, the Flesh, and L.A.

“I clung to him as though only the one who had inflicted the pain could comfort me for suffering it.”
― Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

“I feel like it's a very indiscriminate 'hey.' I feel like these guys go through and 'hey' at eight hundred women, and they see who will 'hey' back. like they're blowing a horn at the top of a mountain and waiting for goats to come running.”
― Linda Holmes, Flying Solo