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Three Complete Novels: The Postman Always Rings Twice/Double Indemnity/Mildred Pierce by
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Joe
is on page 377 of 399
Mildred soon entered the days of her apotheosis. War was crashing in Europe, but she knew little of it, and cared less. She was drunk with the glory of the Valhalla she had entered: the house among the oaks, where dwelt the girl with the coppery hair, the lovely voice, and the retinue of admirers, teachers, coaches, agents, and thieves who made life so exciting.
— Nov 11, 2022 11:01AM
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Joe
is on page 366 of 399
Just how exact her plan was it would be hard to say. She was wholly feminine, and it seems to be part of the feminine mind that it can tack indefinitely upwind, each tack bearing off at a vague angle, and yet all bearing inexorably on the buoy. Perhaps she herself didn't quite know how many tacks she would have to make to reach the buoy, which was Veda, not Monty.
— Nov 11, 2022 10:30AM
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Joe
is on page 356 of 399
Mildred sat quite still, and when she heard Veda drive off she was consumed by a fury so cold that it almost seemed as if she felt nothing at all. It didn't occur to her that she was acting less like a mother than a lover who has unexpectedly discovered an act of faithlessness, and avenged it.
— Nov 10, 2022 05:31PM
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Joe
is on page 341 of 399
However, she was incapable of leaving Veda alone. In the first place, she had an honest concern about her. In the second place, she had become so accustomed to domineering over the many lives that depended on her, that patience, wisdom, and tolerance had almost ceased to be a part of her. And in the third place, to have her lying there in bed, not even thinking about her, was an agony too great to be borne.
— Nov 10, 2022 04:45PM
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Joe
is on page 282 of 399
She was using a gas waffle, instead of the usual electric waffle, "because that's the old-fashioned kind of round waffle that people really like." She went to the switch box, put on the light, and when it was on, she went out to look. There it was, as beautiful as ever, casting a bluish light over the trees. She drew a deep breath and came inside. At last she was open, at last she had her own business.
— Nov 10, 2022 12:15PM
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Joe
is on page 279 of 399
She got out the chickens, went over them carefully for pinfeathers, found Mr. Gurney's picking a great deal better than most market picking. Then she took a small cleaver and sanctioned them up. She was going to serve half a fried chicken, with vegetables or waffle, for 85¢, but she hated the half chicken that was served in most places. She was going to do it differently.
— Nov 09, 2022 08:39PM
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Joe
is on page 270 of 399
Dr. Aldous was Bert's rector, and for a miserable moment Mildred felt ashamed that she could claim no rector as her own. As a child she had gone to the Methodist Sunday school, but then her mother had begun to shop around, and finally wound up with the astrologers who had named Veda and Ray. Astrologers, she reflected unhappily, didn't quite seem to fit the bill at this particular time.
— Nov 09, 2022 08:03PM
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Joe
is on page 246 of 399
For the first time in her life, Mildred felt the quick, hot excitement of a conspiratorial deal. She comprehended the credit aspect of it and she didn't need to be told how perfect the place was for her purposes. In her mind's eye she could already see the neon sign, a neat blue one, without red or green on it:
MILDRED PIERCE
Chicken | Waffles | Pies
Free Parking
— Nov 09, 2022 03:21PM
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MILDRED PIERCE
Chicken | Waffles | Pies
Free Parking
Joe
is on page 232 of 399
Tips, she knew instinctively, were a matter of regular customers who left dimes instead of nickels. She cultivated men, as all the girls did, as they were better tippers than women. She thought up little schemes to find out their names, remembered all their little likes, dislikes, and crotchets. She had a talent for quiet flirtation, but found that this didn't pay.
— Nov 09, 2022 02:20PM
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Joe
is on page 224 of 399
They sat a long time without speaking. So, with the door tightly locked, the shades pulled down, and the keyhole stuffed up, they resumed their romance, there in the den. Romance, perhaps, wasn't quite the word for of that emotion she felt not the slightest flicker. Whatever it was, it afforded two hours or relief, of forgetfulness.
— Nov 09, 2022 01:58PM
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Joe
is on page 214 of 399
Miss Turner got out a card and savagely wrote a note on it, her eyes snapping as she handed it over to Mildred. "All right, you wanted to know why I recommended you for this. It's because you've let half your life slip by without learning anything but sleeping, cooking, and setting the table, and that's all you're good for. So get over there. It's what you've got to do, so you may as well start doing it."
— Nov 09, 2022 01:26PM
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Joe
is on page 209 of 399
Mildred, remembering to write neatly, furnished what seemed to her an absurd amount of information about herself, from her age, weight, height, and nationality, to her religion, education and exact marital status. Most of these questions struck her as irrelevant, and some of them impertinent. However, she answered them. When she came to the question: What type of work desired?--she hesitated.
— Nov 09, 2022 01:12PM
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Joe
is on page 209 of 399
Miss Turner, who had a small suite in one of the downtown office buildings, turned out to be a trim little person, not much older than Mildred, and a little on the hard-boiled side. She smoked a cigarette in a long holder, with which she waved Mildred to a small desk, and without looking up, told her to fill out a card.
— Nov 09, 2022 01:11PM
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Joe
is on page 204 of 399
She drew breath to say he was just like the rest of them, and then add Mrs. Gessler's phrase, "the dirty bastards," but somehow the words didn't come. There was some core of honesty within her that couldn't quite accept Mrs. Gessler's interpretations of life, however they might amuse her at the moment. She didn't really believe they were dirty bastards, and she had set a trap for Wally.
— Nov 09, 2022 12:37PM
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Joe
is on page 193 of 399
For a day or two after Bert left, Mildred lived in a sort of fool's paradise, meaning she got two orders for cakes and three orders for pies. They kept her bustlingly busy, and she kept thinking what she would say to Bert, when he dropped around to see the children. She was a little given to rehearsing things in her mind, and having imaginary triumphs over people who had upset her in one way and another.
— Nov 09, 2022 11:54AM
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Joe
is on page 187 of 399
A grim silence fell on both women. Then Mrs. Gessler shook her head. "Well you've joined the biggest army on earth. You're the great American institution that never gets mentioned on the Fourth of July--a grass widow with two small children to support. The dirty bastards."
"Oh Bert's all right."
"He's all right, but he's a dirty bastard and they're all dirty bastards."
— Nov 09, 2022 11:24AM
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"Oh Bert's all right."
"He's all right, but he's a dirty bastard and they're all dirty bastards."
Joe
is on page 184 of 399
So, almost overnight, with his 300 acres that were located in the exact spot where people wanted to build, he became a subdivider, a community builder, a man of vision, a big shot. He formed a company called Pierce Homes, Inc., with himself as president. He named a street after himself, and on Pierce Drive, after he married Mildred, built the very home he now occupied, or would occupy for the next twenty minutes.,
— Nov 09, 2022 11:13AM
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Joe
is on page 183 of 399
In his teens he had been a stunt rider for the movies and was still vain of his horsemanship. Then an uncle had died and left him a ranch on the outskirts of Glendale, now an endless suburb, bearing the same relation to Los Angeles as Queens bears to New York. But at that time it was a village, and a pretty scrubby village, with a freight yard at one end, open country at the other, and a car track down the middle.
— Nov 09, 2022 11:08AM
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Joe
is on page 179 of 399
In the spring of 1931, on a lawn in Glendale, California, a man was bracing trees. It was a tedious job, for he had first to prune dead twigs, then wrap canvas buffers around weak branches, then wind rope slings over the buffers and tie them to the trunks, to hold the weight of the avocados that would ripen in the fall. Yet, although it was a hot afternoon, he took his time and was conscientiously thorough.
— Nov 09, 2022 10:30AM
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Joe
is on page 176 of 399
She's got that red thing on. It's awful-looking. It's just one big square of red silk that she wraps around her, but it's got no armholes, and her hands look like stumps underneath it when she moves them around. She looks like what came aboard the ship to shoot dice for souls in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
— Nov 08, 2022 03:59PM
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Joe
is on page 151 of 399
I had killed a man, for money and a woman. I didn't have the money and I didn't have the woman. The woman was a killer, out-and-out, and she had made a fool of me. She had used me for a cat's paw so she could have another man, and she had enough on me to hang me higher than a kite. If the man was in on it, there were two of them that could hang me.
— Nov 08, 2022 03:06PM
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Joe
is on page 131 of 399
I knew then what I had done. I had killed a man. I had killed a man to get a woman. I had put myself in her power, so there was one person in the world that could point a finger at me, and I would have to due. I had done all that for her, and I never wanted to see her again as long as I lived.
That's all it takes, one drop of fear, to curdle love into hate.
— Nov 08, 2022 02:33PM
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That's all it takes, one drop of fear, to curdle love into hate.
Joe
is on page 115 of 399
All this, what I've been telling you, happened in late winter, along the middle of February. Of course, in California February looks like any other month, but anyway it would have been winter anywhere else.
— Nov 08, 2022 01:07PM
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Joe
is on page 107 of 399
If that seems funny to you that I would kill a man just to pick up a stack of chips, it might not seem so funny if you were back of that wheel, instead of out front. I had seen so many houses burned down, so many cars wrecked, so many corpses with blue holes in their temples, so many awful things that people had pulled to crook the wheel, that that stuff didn't seem real to me any more.
— Nov 07, 2022 07:51PM
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Joe
is on page 105 of 399
"There comes a time in any murder when the only thing that can see you through is audacity, and I can't tell you why,. You know the perfect murder? You think it's this swimming pool job, and you're going to do it so slick nobody would ever guess it. They'd guess it in two seconds, flat. In three seconds, flat, they'd prove it, and in four seconds, flat, you'd confess it."
— Nov 07, 2022 07:40PM
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Joe
is on page 99 of 399
I was standing right on the deep end, looking over the edge, and I kept telling myself to get out of there, and get quick, and never come back. But that was what I kept telling myself. What I was doing was peeping over the edge, and all the time I was trying to pull away from it, there was something in me that kept edging a little closer, trying to get a better look.
— Nov 04, 2022 06:09PM
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