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We don’t shake hands in Gallacia, but Americans are completely mad for it, and you can’t refuse or they get this confused, somewhat hurt look. I resigned myself to shaking a great many hands in the next few weeks.
The way he pronounced dark as dahhhk was so pure that I had an involuntary urge to snatch up the teapot and find a harbor to dump it in.
“That is horrifying and I want to go home,” I said, although I pronounced it, “Ah. I see.”
I wasn’t thrilled about it, but frankly, I had been tired of explaining matters a decade ago, and by now I had approached a kind of transcendent exhaustion.
Christ’s blood. No wonder Americans all move like they’ve got extra space around them. If their country was a house, it would be one of those monstrous old ramblers that no one can afford to heat in the winter. They probably develop drafts in New York because someone left a window open in San Francisco.
I rubbed my temples and wondered if God still looked out for fools, and if so, whether I’d exceeded Har patience already.
“He said you were as brave as a lion.” “Well. Denton was no slouch himself.” I took a hasty swig of beer. You shouldn’t just spring earnest praise on a person like that. It’s embarrassing.
Probably there’s a culture where ask him a few questions isn’t a euphemism for beat him until answers fall out, but I’ve yet to encounter it.
“If you thought my body was at the bottom of a mine shaft, would you crawl down to get it?” “Are you serious?” asked my dearest friend. “I’d throw a bottle of livrit down after you, toast your memory, and be on the next boat back to Gallacia.”
I held up both hands and stepped between them, in the pose colloquially known as “the first one to get punched.”
Ingold got the hunted look of a man trying to explain psychology to an alien jellyfish creature. (It’s rare, but you know it when you see it.)
“It’s complicated, Fragment. Sometimes when people hurt for a long time, they start to think that hurting is part of who they are. And then anything that helps the hurt, even healing, feels like it’s trying to strip part of them away.”
And now we were talking about feelings. I would almost rather he had poured the burning oil on me.
Also he, too, spent hours learning to flick a Zippo lighter to impress girls. Never let it be said that art doesn’t imitate life.
