Tuesday, December 13, 2005

And when she walks across the room, she makes my heart go, "Boom, Boom, Boom!"

I was reading this morning and I came to a passage that made me tingly. I once read a cover blurb for a novel (I can't recall which) that said the book contained phrases that make you want to claw yourself with pleasure. This little bit below did that for me. It's not flowery or complex. It's evocative, though. You can see this woman in your mind. And you want to meet her.

I went out into the hall and leaned over the banister, just enough to see without being seen. She was still on the stairs, now she reached the landing, and the ragbag colors of her boy's hair, tawny streaks, strands of albino-blond and yellow, caught the hall light. It was a warm evening, nearly summer, and she wore a slim cool black dress, black sandals, a pearl choker. For all her chic thinness, she had an almost breakfast-cereal air of health, a soap and lemon cleanness, a rough pink darkening in the cheeks. Her mouth was large, her nose upturned. A pair of dark glasses blotted out her eyes. It was a face beyond childhood, yet this side of belonging to a woman. I thought her anywhere between sixteen and thirty; as it turned out, she was shy two months of her nineteenth birthday.


It's good, huh? Anyone know her?

4 comments:

Michael said...

Anyone? Wingedman still around?

The Other Andrew said...

Duh. Too highbrow. Literature schmiterature... let's talk about guys!

Of course I jest, I'm not familiar with this passage. (Sorry, are we now talking about guys again?)

Michael said...

I know. I don't know why I did that. I hate being quizzed.
This lil' passage is describing Miss Holly Golightly of Breakfast at Tiffany's fame. Since I had read In Cold Blood years ago, I was required to pick up something other than that after watching Capote some weeks back. The boy could turn a phrase (and enter/exit with a flourish) like nobody's bidness.

The Other Andrew said...

Sure he could, and he was also the 8th Dwarf, Swishy.