“There was something about him she liked: something earthy beneath the act. In L.A., beneath the act you got nougat or Styrofoam. Or glass. Sidra’s mouth was lined with sherry. Walt’s lips shone with beer. ‘What’s the last movie you saw?’ she asked him.”

“They still had no place to stay that night, and though it remained light quite late, and the inns stayed open until ten, she imagined the two of them temporarily homeless, sleeping under the stars, snacking on slugs. Stars the size of Chicago! Dew like a pixie bath beneath them! They would lick it from their arms.”

“But too often she lay awake, wondering. There was something missing. Something wasn’t happening to her, or was it to him? All through the summer, the thunderstorms set the sky on fire while she lay there, listening for the train sound of a tornado, which never came—though the lightning ripped open the night and lit the trees like things too suddenly remembered, then left them indecipherable again in the dark.

”’You’re not feeling anything, are you?’ he finally said. ‘What is wrong?’

“’I’m not sure,’ she said cryptically. ‘The rainstorms are so loud in this part of the world.’ The wind from a storm blew through the screens and sometimes caused the door to the bedroom to slam shut. ‘I don’t like a door to slam,’ she whispered. ‘It makes me think someone is mad.’”
—Birds of America