Black Wings Has My Angel

She kissed the way an expert dancer follows the lead, giving and taking at exquisitely the right moment, and getting across the idea that she had a lot in reserve and this was only a sample. I’m not lying when I say I think that kiss lasted a quarter hour. But I still planned to leave her in the ladies john of some filling station. Because you can’

And I felt so marvelously clean and soaped and so in tune with the whole damned universe that I had the feeling I could have clouded up and rained and lightninged myself, and blown that cheese-colored room to smithereens.

I kept comparing the rocks and the sky with what we have down South and kind of gloating to think that the South, though lacking in chamber-of-commerce promotion, has the subtlest colors and teasingest smells a man could want. Out West all the smells are sucked up out of the baked land by the sun. And it’s as if all the colors in the ground are gob

Peeking, as a cultural instrument, must have come into its own with invention of the lacework balcony. This not only affords the aforementioned screen for the observer, but allows him such a variety of metal frames for the object of observation as to keep the game fresh. A fat woman in a mustard-colored dress viewed through any one of the four righ

Twice that night I touched her and each time she moved away from me so I decided the hell with it. Toward midnight I was hungry again and I piled out of the bag and found some bologna and bread. Up there in those mountains your belly feels brand new, like you never used it before and can never get it full, and that stuff tasted like smoked turkey a

She watched me, leaning back in her leather-padded corner, smoking quietly. Nothing seemed to surprise her: the car, the tags, the business of taking an uncharted trip with an unknown man. The wind whipped her bright hair the way it does in the soft-drink advertisements, co-operatively, beautifully. The cross-stripes of tar on the white highway thu

She was breathing oddly, her shoulders moving as if her lungs were upstairs there, in her shoulders. She wore a T shirt of some kind of cocoa toweling and when she leaned back hard against the seat it was a splendid thing to see. Her skirt was gray flannel and it fitted as if it had been smeared on her, and below it were the legs. You hear and read

“Virginia!” “What, Tim?” “I don’t know too much about loving, honestly loving, but I think I love you.” “You’re drunk, Tim, drunk on sunshine and exercise and having a woman all to yourself.” “No. I feel funny about you.” “Then you’re crazy.” “Of course, but that has nothing to do with it. I want to make you happy, so I guess I love you.” “Tim, you

“Does it ever bother you a lot, darling, that I am what I am?” “No.” I kissed her on the nose and it was cold and innocent as a button. “Honestly, Tim?” “No, the only time you bother me is when you’re not what you are.” “That’s a lovely thing to say.” “I’m not trying to be lovely. I’m telling you what I think.”