One More On Nightmare

Lately, I know, I've been posting alot about Nightmare in Pink, a part of the Travis McGee series by John D. MacDonald. Does it warrant this much posting? Probably not. But, when reads so few novels these days thanks to homework, and work work, well then one posts alot about the things he enjoys. 

Regardless, the other day I wrote that there were some lines which I found particularly compelling and I wanted to share them with someone, so this audience will do.  

This first is long, but so worth it. I love how much he puts into this description and how much we learn not just about the characters, but also about their relationship. There's even a line about mornings, which I love to find.

So we rolled home in taxi-laughter and climbed the stairs, and with slow and loving care and myriad interruptions, I undressed her into the rowdy bed. We gamboled and romped like love-struck kids until we sobered into our ultimate ceremony and this time she called to me. “Trav, Trav, Trav-isssss!” It was a night of small entangled sleeps and awakenings. Our uses seemed to deepen the hunger rather than blunt or diminish it. We became more violently sensitized to each other, more skilled and knowing in the plunder. It is a rare thing, that infatuation which grows with each sating, so that those caresses which are merely affection and the gratitude of release and sleepy habit turn in their own slow time into the next overture, the next threshold, the next unwearied increment of heat and need, using and knowing, learning and giving, new signs and signals in a private and special language, freshened heats and scents and tastes, sweetened gasps of fitting thus, knowing this, learning of that, rediscovering the inexhaustible here, the remorseless now. 

In an early sunlight of Sunday I dressed slowly. She lay foundered and pungent in the turmoiled bed, deep in her honeyed sleep. When I was ready to go, I sat on the edge of the bed and kissed her salty temple and a smudged eyelid. She murmured and slowly raised a hundredweight of head and peered at me from a small sleep-sodden face. Then she lunged and hung soft arms around my neck, sagging heavily against me, and mumbled, “Doan go way.”

Then there was this. The hero goes to meet someone and he immediately begins to categorize her. I love the description of this lady. Puts her firmly in a place for the reader. 

I took a more careful look at Bonita Hersch. Her grooming was almost too perfect. Every little golden hair was in place. Her eyes were a pale cold gray-blue. Under the disguise of lipstick, her upper lip was very thin and her under lip was full and heavy. Her hands were wide and rather plump, with short thick fingers.

Then finally there is this line. I love the way he writes for her to say, "I want to be you" and he emphasizes it. Man, have you ever felt that way about someone? If not, go find them now. It's the next level. 

“Then maybe what’s wrong with me, I worry about enjoying it too much. I like every part of everything. Just even holding you while you sleep makes my heart turn over and over. I want to be you. I want us to be one creature, wearing one skin, knowing any pain or pleasure as if we were all of one part. Like once last night, a time when I couldn’t reach you, I turned my head like this and kissed my own shoulder, and it made sense to me, and I laughed out loud, because it was our flesh I was kissing with one of our mouths.”