Books

"The Hyena is exactly what Elisabeth had been expecting: a brazen invertebrate, the worst kind of person this age has produced. Abject beings, flaunting their lack of grace, and proud to live like animals. One doesn't even think of Satan on seeing her approach: he would choose a more impressive shape. Not this long, slim, flexible body, stupidly pleased with itself."

"There are terrible things that never get easier, and there are things even more terrible that get easier with time and repetition."

On the deepest level in my gut, I knew she was not coming. How could she come? It was ridiculous. Idealistic. Flighty. Fantasy. But she’d told me she’d gotten a driver, and she would leave the city around ten a.m. I had to take her at her word. Though I’d possibly be cooler, more authentic, if I didn’t scrub the toilet and change my books around so the obscure ones would show.

She wore red high heels and tight jeans and backcombed her hair. She scared them all. She chewed gum loudly in class, she got great grades and she knew she could fuck whoever she wanted and knew she’d fuck them better than they’d ever been fucked before. So she fucked the ones she chose to fuck. She fucked the ones who deserved her shit. And then she fucked Mark.

“She cleared her throat once or twice, and said something about poor people should eat a lot of herrings, as they were most nutritious, also she had heard poor people eat heaps of sheeps' heads and she went on to ask if I ever cooked them. I said I would rather be dead than cook or eat a sheep's head; I'd seen them in butchers' shops with awful eyes and bits of wool sticking to their skulls. After that helpful hints for the poor were forgotten.”