But you've looked forward to this trip for so long.""And now I won't have it to look forward to any longer.

He leaned close. "I look at you, I look at this." His gesture indicated the fine room, the fine people in it. "And I doubt you've ever been hungry in your life.It seemed a ridiculous thing to have to prove.She leaned closer, reached across his untouched plate, and plucked the small white carnation from his boutonniere. She bit the petals from the stem and chewed.

Al shook his head. "Honestly," he said. "How can you use such things?"Mary Frances finished her thought. Use was an interesting word, the word for tools, talents, whores. She wanted to say, At least I'm using something, but she looked at his face, and she couldn't.

Cuban-heeled stockings; not the sort of thing you could buy for another man's wife.

Catherine de Medici brought her cooks to France when she married, and those cooks brought sherbet and custard and cream puffs, artichokes and onion soup, and the idea of roasting birds with oranges. As well as cooks, she brought embroidery and handkerchiefs, perfumes and lingerie, silverware and glassware and the idea that gathering around a table was something to be done thoughtfully. In essence, she brought being French to France.

I try never to speak until people have finished with the weather reports.

How do they know what to do?" Mary Frances said. "To just rip into a building like that and expect it to stay standing.""For the parts you want to stay standing," Tim said."Exactly.""Practice," Al said. "And of course, one of them is in charge."Mary Frances studied the tangle of men, all dressed alike, movingly easily together. "I can't tell them apart.""Well, it's like war, I guess," Al said. "If you knew whom to blame, it'd be too easy to shoot him.