Smutty Sully’s Reviews > The Starving Years > Status Update

Javier’s uncovered eye narrowed. Probably the one behind the eye patch, too.

Even with just the one eye, Javier gave Nelson a look that told him they weren’t.

Javier looked at him, hard. Nelson felt like he was being X-rayed. Maybe losing sight in one eye was like losing one of the full senses. It sharpened whatever remained to a preternatural point.

Hey guys, did you know there's an EYE PATCH in this book?!

Maybe because he was Cuban. A rich Cuban. If such a thing even existed. Nelson tended to learn his politics as he needed them, and he’d never kept company with a Cuban before, so he only knew the generalities: Bay of Pigs, dictatorship, boat people, embargo. That sort of thing.


That sort of thing.

Despite the fact that the immigrants here lived in apartment buildings rather than corrugated metal lean-tos, the third-world smell wasn’t that different from the shantytowns of Caracas. Piss and garbage. Smoke. Fish. The fish bodies rolled in on trucks filled with ice in the wee hours of the morning, where they were traded in the back rooms of the jewelry exchanges and the bail bonds shops.

Ah, third-world smell...

Tim did lock gazes with Javier, then. It was disconcerting with the eye patch— how was it that in the week they’d been chatting online, Javier had never thought to mention the eye patch?


Or maybe it was a shudder. Or maybe, despite the eye patch, he couldn’t get past the last few lines Javier had typed in chat, less than a week before....


This book is MMM +the eye patch.

“They say mint and lamb went well together—but, hey. They still eat termites in Ghana, so what do ‘they’ know?” Nelson held up his half of verde. “I’ve never really been much for mint.”


This is going to be a very long read.

The eye patch has entered the room:

The rest of his face—if you could even see beyond the patch—was graceful and beautifully proportioned, in a swarthy, exotic, Latin way.


How big is the eye patch that you may have difficulty seeing beyond it?

Swarthy?

Exotic?