Jacob’s Reviews > Eight Mortal Ladies Possessed: A Book of Stories > Status Update

He'd worn not well in the five years that had followed. When things don't change, their sameness becomes an accretion. That is why all society puts on flesh. Succumbs to the cubicles and begins to fill them. The bargain basement had put fat on Mr. Mason. The change boxes took his youth and gave him quarters.

She sighed and permitted her hand to fall into his lap. And there she made a discovery of less than minimal requirements for a long-term companion.
"My dear," she murmured, "how dreadful it must be for you."
He understood her meaning and after a moment or two he said to her, "I have some male friends of your age or thereabouts who have admired the size and color of my eyes."

The morning light did not seem to care for the city, it seemed to be creeping into it and around it with understandable aversion. The city and the morning were embracing each other as if they'd been hired to perform an act of intimacy that was equally abhorrent to them both.