Let it Come Down: A Novel

And through it all, like an arhythmical percussive accompaniment there had been the constant metallic slamming of doors throughout the hotel, each one of which shook the flimsy edifice and resounded through it like a small blast.

It was not a question of looking or acting like a winner—that could always be managed, although no one was taken in by it—it was a matter of conviction, of feeling like one, of knowing you belonged to the caste, of recognizing and being sure of your genius. For a long time he reflected confusedly upon these things;

The objects in the room, its walls and furniture, the air around his head, the idea that he was in the room, that he was going to eat dinner, that the cliffs, and the sea were below, all these things were playing a huge, inaudible music that was rising each second toward a climax which he knew would be unbearable when it was reached. “It’s going to

But things don’t happen, he told himself. You have to make them happen. That was where he was stuck. It was not in him to make things happen; it never had been.

He still felt coreless—he was no one, and he was standing here in the middle of no country. The place was counterfeit, a waiting room between connections, a transition from one way of being to another, which for the moment was neither way, no way.

Even that annoyed her. She considered the question insolent. It assumed an intimacy which ought to have existed between them, but which for some reason did not. “But why not?” she wondered, looking closely at his satisfied, serious expression. The answer came up ready-made and absurd from her subconscious; it sounded like doggerel. “It doesn’t exis

“Look, my pet,” she said in a conciliatory tone, “Just what do you want in life?” “That’s a hard question,” he said slowly. She had taken the wind out of his sails. “I suppose I want to feel I’m getting something out of it.”

“Between the crackling that rends the air and the actual flash of lightning that strikes you, there is a split second which seems endless, and during which you are conscious that the end has come. That split second is now.”

It had been an adventure, but Daisy had had very little to do with it, beyond being the detonating factor; almost all of it had taken place inside him.