The night was very stark, alternate streams of town cars and chequered taxicabs, blaring horns busily staking claims—here is the road and here is the sidewalk. But the road looked so much livelier, what if I tried the road?

She smiled with a scary energy, as if she had been told to at gunpoint.

A song called 'Earth Angel' played in her head all morning—also three trumpets and a piano.

I examined the portraits nearest to me but couldn't get past the sensation that here was the same man over and over, crouched in old boxes, readying himself to spit on my plate.

The water was so cold on her skin that it felt dry.

His heavy eyebrows lowered and he made some small, involuntary gesture with his hand that was recognisably superstitious, as if the words 'God forbid' had flowed into his body.

There was . . . a mirror that crawled across the wall in a wooden frame. When I go into Miri's room all I can see, all I can think of is that enormous mirror, like a lake on the wall.