Although it is Carol who looks removed from the world, fainter almost than a handprint on a fogless car window, she finds it is Tony who really does not belong. There is a color of light he carries with him; a color that follows him like a dangerous man whom neighbours judged perfectly normal. These are a few words to describe it: cold, hollow, and delicate. It is almost -- but not quite -- blue. It is as if an innovative filmmaker had painted the lens of his camera with gel, and then, through some accident of circumstance, left it on Tony, with the viewfinder encompassing all the world.
The camera's concentration, too, he brings into her life. So that a February day eating tangerines zeroes in on the two of them: no one else. There is no one outside the little black box of their minds, which move so much in tandem. As usual, Tony has bled the tangerines dry of eponymous color; of flavor, of feel. Yet everything is enormously, monstrously clear. They are waiting, she knows. They have laid out the map and are waiting for something to go wrong. The weight of it between them creates impasse. The sins of others between them are no man's land.
Sometimes she thinks, she could violate all these rules: could put her hand out, through unbroken glass. But she knows that he knows that she never will.
no subject
Although it is Carol who looks removed from the world, fainter almost than a handprint on a fogless car window, she finds it is Tony who really does not belong. There is a color of light he carries with him; a color that follows him like a dangerous man whom neighbours judged perfectly normal. These are a few words to describe it: cold, hollow, and delicate. It is almost -- but not quite -- blue. It is as if an innovative filmmaker had painted the lens of his camera with gel, and then, through some accident of circumstance, left it on Tony, with the viewfinder encompassing all the world.
The camera's concentration, too, he brings into her life. So that a February day eating tangerines zeroes in on the two of them: no one else. There is no one outside the little black box of their minds, which move so much in tandem. As usual, Tony has bled the tangerines dry of eponymous color; of flavor, of feel. Yet everything is enormously, monstrously clear. They are waiting, she knows. They have laid out the map and are waiting for something to go wrong. The weight of it between them creates impasse. The sins of others between them are no man's land.
Sometimes she thinks, she could violate all these rules: could put her hand out, through unbroken glass. But she knows that he knows that she never will.