Henry & Claire (excerpts)

Pg 331

Henry had noticed her at once, from the beginning. She sat cross-legged on the sand near the ceremonial fire of juniper, her skirt hiked up far enough to expose a pair of glossy kneecaps to the light. Beyond those kneecaps would be sleek convergent thighs heading - who knows where? Straight to trouble that's for certain. Smiling, the girl asked her question.

Pg 338

One final hot clasp of hand and she was gone. Forever probably.

Henry shuffled homeward through the Utah sand, among the junipers and prickly pear. Don't let it bother you, he told himself. Girls are like busses; Miss one, another will come along in five minutes. And then despised himself for entertaining so cheap and false and vulgar a thought. Not like her you fool...

Pg 339

... Heard a great horned owl call his name. Fool... fool... fool... He thought of Claire, Miss Mellon - Honeydew! And his heart rose and swelled like an unfolding hydrangea.

Pg 364 - 365

He realized with a shock of horror that he was at liberty to go anywhere he wished. Nobody cared about where he went.

He wanted her so much. For so long. He desired her so intensely over such a length of time that the longing became a malaise, a sickness. Desire - the word itself, in it's very sound, with its dying call of suspiration, resembled the enchanted misery of his fever. A fever in the blood, fever in the mind, fever in the soul.

Pg 377

He lit his Aladdin lamp and began a letter:

Dear darling Claire,

He wrote.

If I cannot see you again, I will surely die.

Surely die? What a redundancy is death.