“He is desperate for his dinner, too hungry to say hello, … he laments his work, his employer, his cold-footed commute, … he grinds his teeth at our rationed mutton and yet—the frugal bastard—gives me nothing, nothing, not a penny to spare.”
” ‘There are four ways to get into Narrows,’ Grandpa once said, leaning back in a rocking chair in his Colorado living room. ‘Two’ Grandma countered. ‘One across the bridge, one along the railroad tracks where you turn right.’ ‘There are four ways,’ he insisted, ‘but it took me twenty years to find them all.’ “
“It does not matter that Claire in real life, though a remarkably talented singer, is not a songwriter. This Claire is not that Claire, even though they are inextricably linked by more than their names and the name of their current partners.”
“The early afternoon lured more cars on the road. The drive to home because slower and slower. The air was dewy with heat and silence, and they all say boiling in the hot, stinking sun.”
