Other Voices, Other Rooms (Vintage International)

by Truman Capote

“All children are morbid: it’s their one saving grace,”

“Goodbye,” he called, and stood there watching until she grew pinpoint small, lost, and the accordion soundless, gone.

A rash of lightning rattled the stars; Miss Wisteria’s royal headgear caught fire in this brief tinseled burst, the glass jewels glittering roselike in the pink lights of the ferris-wheel, and Joel, left below, could see her white winglike hands alight on Idabel’s hair, flutter away, squeeze the dark as if eating its very substance.

no greetings passed between them, nor smiles, it was as if each felt too much the fatigued embarrassment of anticlimax.

sycamores released their spice-brown leaves in a rain of October: