‘Is that the end?‘ she asked, waking up. She floundered for something more to say. ‘Of course I like dykes themselves. They don‘t scare me a bit. But stories about dykes bore the bejesus out of me. I just can‘t put myself in their shoes. Well really, darling,‘ she said, because I was clearly puzzled, ‘if it‘s not about a couple of old bull-dykes, what the hell is it about?‘ - P25
‘Incidentally,‘ she said, ‘do you happen to know any nice lesbians? I‘m looking for a room-mate. Well, don‘t laugh. I‘m so disorganized, I simply can‘t afford a maid; and really, dykes are wonderful homemakers, they love to do all the work, you never have to bother about brooms and defrosting and sending out the laundry. I had a room-mate in Hollywood, she played in Westerns, they called her the Lone Ranger; but I‘ll say this for her, she was better than a man around the house. Of course people couldn‘t help but think I must be a bit of a dyke myself. And of course I am. Everyone is: a bit. So what? That never discouraged a man yet, in fact it seems to goad them on. Look at the Lone Ranger, married twice. Usually dykes only get married once, just for the name. It seems to carry such cachet later on to be called Mrs Something Another. That‘s not true!‘ She was staring at an alarm clock on the table. ‘It can‘t be four-thirty!‘ - P26
At any rate she no longer rang my bell. I missed that; and as the days merged I began to feel toward her certain far-fetched resentments, as if I were being neglected by my closest friend. A disquieting loneliness came into my life, but induced no hunger for friends of longer acquaintance: they seemed now like a salt-free, sugarless diet. - P33
Even when she‘s wearing glasses this thick;even when she opens her mouth and you don‘t know if she‘s a hillbilly or an Okie or what. I still don‘t. My guess, nobody‘ll ever know where she came from.
She‘s such a goddamn liar, maybe she don‘t know herself any more. But it took us a year to smooth out that accent. How we did it finally, we gave her French lessons: after she could imitate French, it wasn‘t so long she could imitate English. We modelled her along the Margaret Sullavan type, but she could pitch some curves of her own, people were interested, big ones, and to top it all, Benny Polan, a respected guy, Benny wants to marry her. An agent could ask for more? Then wham! The Story of Dr Wassell. - P38
‘What scandals are you spreading, O.J.?‘
Holly splashed into the room, a towel more or less wrapped round her and her wet feet dripping footmarks on the floor. - P39
I was left abandoned by the bookshelves; of the books there, more than half were about horses, the rest baseball. Pretending an interest in Horseflesh and How to Tell It gave me sufficiently private opportunity for sizing Holly‘s friends. - P41
But he‘s got a point, I should feel guilty. Not because they would have given me the part or because I would have beengood: they wouldn‘t and I wouldn‘t. If I do feel guilty,
I guess it‘s because I let him go on dreaming when I wasn‘t dreaming a bit. I was just vamping for time to make a few self-improvements: I knew damn well I‘d never be a movie star. It‘s too hard; and if you‘re intelligent, it‘s too embarrassing. My complexes aren‘t inferior enough: being a movie star and having a big fat ego are supposed to go hand-in-hand; actually, it‘s essential not to have any ego at all. I don‘tmean I‘d mind being rich and famous. - P45
She was still hugging the cat. ‘Poor slob,‘ she said,
tickling his head, ‘poor slob without a name. It‘s a little inconvenient, his not having a name. But I haven‘t any right to give him one: he‘ll have to wait until he belongs to somebody. We just sort of took up by the river one day, we don‘t belong to each other:he‘s an independent, and so am I. I don‘t want to own anything until I know I‘ve found the place where me and things belong together. I‘m not quite sure where that is just yet. But I know what it‘s like.‘ She smiled, and let the cat drop to the floor. ‘It‘s like Tiffany‘s,‘
she said. - P46
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