Neck pleasure gapingHe stared for a moment and then nodded. “You’re gonna be all right, Aunt Deb,” he said, showing more relief than I felt. “It was tough going there for a while. We had to drain your lungs every day for three weeks and you were on life support for half that time. I’m actually surprised that you survived. You’re not going to tie yourself down now, are you? The poetry of couture was responsible for cocktails, balls, dinner parties. The champagne flowed, hothouse flowers poured in, we walked about on a floor strewn with orchids. When you say it, Dynsk?gar, Dynsk?gar, you can hear hooves clattering long, long ago in bright late-June midday sunlight when the glacier glows its whitest, between brand-new birch leaves, and a bird throws itself down from the clouds and lands sure-winged on a branch. “My backyard is the whole desert,” he said. He formed a cup with his hands and guided a dead yellow jacket along the edge of the water. “I’ve got this knife that used to be my dad’s, from the army. You take it to the cactus at just the right angle, you can get this really sweet water out of it.” He scrunched up his face and concentrated. After thirty seconds or so he shook his head no. He’d have to be a consummate liar to have succeeded with an act like that. I was wearing a white sundress that didn’t crowd my tits or ass. It accented my figure simply because it fit and I liked the way it made me look — somewhat older and a few pounds over the limit. They hadn’t merged after all. She reached up a sleeve and produced several papers.“Here. Take them. I only had a moment alone in the room they use as an office. I grabbed these from a table two days ago, though I don’t really know why. It’s just that they are evil men, and I am sick of Galilee being used for evil.” She shrugged. “The papers make no sense to me. The lieutenants deal with mounds of correspondence. The Commodore writes to Lord Amherst in London. Hobart and Kincaid are always receiving letters and other papers, and paying coin to those who bring them in. Not postmen, more like bounty hunters and sneak thieves.” “It was Ramsey’s indenture that took me from a Scottish prison to America.” The shifting rocks moo, and one has horns. They dance a clunky little waltz in the sheets, and their tails swing in a slow rhythm. DANCING COWS IN EASTFJORDS FOG. “I’d rather not go back to my flat.” “The chemist has some.” There was a letter to Ramsey from the governor of Massachusetts raging over the disrespect shown by Samuel Adams, who, he haughtily pointed out, preferred the company of low farmers and sailors to that of proper gentlemen, and was rumored to be active in Boston’s insidious committee of correspondence that was trying to foment dissent across colonial borders. We emerged from the gardens onto the top of the avenue. And that’s when I heard it.Tocka tocka. The catch. I turned around. Larney was trotting across the tarmac. My eyes dropped to the source of the sound. For fashion roams around the streets, unaware that it exists, up to the moment that I, in my own way, may have expressed it. Fashion, like landscape, is a state of mind, by which I mean my own. Duncan was two steps away when the youth spun about and, with catlike quickness, sprang at him. He saw the flash of the blade in enough time to deflect it from his chest, but not soon enough to avoid a slice across the back of his hand. With a swing of his rifle butt he knocked the boy to the ground, pinned his wrist with his foot, aimed his rifle at the boy’s heart, and pulled back the hammer.. |