“I was driven back to hospital. It felt like all the fight had been kicked out of me. I was floppy, pliable, indifferent. Shuffling around the ward, dribbling a bit, losing a few more brain cells and memories thanks to yet another cocktail of meds.”
“When Joe left me sitting under the apple tree and started to walk across the pasture, he looked back and waved, and then walked on, and then turned and waved, and then walked on, and then he did a complete circle with his arms out, like he was embracing the world. That made me laugh because we were both so happy and so willing to show it.”
“The man stands on the roof of the mansion enveloped by an amorphous cloud of atomized paint. He waves a spray gun back and forth over the stucco chimney stack, and with each pass of the gun new flecks materialize where others have disappeared, leaving him surrounded by an aura of dazzling light.”
“The Yank arrives on the first day of summer, with the pigs. She comes in Festy’s boat, which has to drop anchor and wait for the island men to row out in a curragh. They hand her over the side, along with the mail and two squirming sacks.”
