With a broken-down oven, in a hotel kitchen, on an uninhabited island
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Franklin Mills lives in Middletown, Connecticut.
“Unique” is not the word to describe the messiah who came to stay with us. “Awesome” does better and “eerie” gets closer to home. . . . What I call eerie was his expression. His lips were always poised as if he were about to speak. But he never did, not a word. It got on my nerves.
Such primal taciturnity, thought Rex of the rock, and after all it’s heard — the roar of the victor, the bleat of the victim, and all the echoes thereof ten thousand times over. Surely, I’ve fallen in with good company. Surely, a revelation is in the offing.
How the dog felt about the canary I can describe in no other way: she worshipped it. How else would you explain her devotion? Fascination, perhaps? All right. But worship, at least in part, is fascination taken to its extreme. I leave it to you to judge if this wasn’t an extreme case.
Once on a time long ago in that part of the present that is hidden from general view and which lies in the unreachable future, there were two, only two beings. Where they came from I have no idea and probably they didn’t either. Who could have told them? But I am certain that they were named Mr. Nous and Mme. Ordinat.
She is surprised at her hunger, eats lustily, is further surprised when my lips and hands suggest intimacy. She trembles small for want of cover as I open her clothes to the sunshine.