Mandy

“I could dance with disaster and grin to the end.”
― Glen Cook, Bleak Seasons

“And he was limp, a stringless puppet”
― Max Allan Collins, Quarry

“I sat on my heels and squinted up at her. Dark red hair and disapproval, outlined against a blue December sky. "Win a few, lose a few, honey," I said.

"What are you" she asked.

I stood up and put my hands on her upper arms, near the shoulders and plucked her up off the sawhorse and held her. Maybe I was smiling at her. I wouldn't know. What I was saying seemed to come from a strange direction, as if I were standing several feet behind myself. I said some nonsense about smelling these things out, about sensing the quickest way to open people up, and so you do it, because if you don't, then maybe you miss one little piece of something you should know, and then you go join the long long line of the dead ones, because you were careless.

"And," I heard myself say, "Tush killed himself but not with that damned engine block. He killed himself with something he said, or something he did, and he didn't know he was killing himself. Maybe he didn't listen very good, or catch on soon enough. I listen very good. I catch on. And when I add up this tab and name the price, I'm going to look at some nice gray skin, honey. Gray and pale, oily and guilty as hell, and some eyes shifting around looking for some way out of it. But every damned door will be nailed shut.”
― John D. MacDonald, Pale Gray for Guilt

“Maybe we should talk when you've calmed down."
"Okay, then. Call me back next year.”
― Max Allan Collins, Quarry