swirl
I spent a few minutes with Francine Prose yesterday. Nothing happened. I read for a dozen pages or more and she said, essentially, that great writers write great sentences. Okay. Not exactly the insight I was looking for, but then it does seem occasionally that I end up needing most what dropped in my lap while I was wishing for something else. However, I was thrilled when I read her thoughts about dialogue. The basic question: Does the dialogue serve only one purpose? Aha. I. Eleanor remembered that first time, too. She remembered the clamshell velvet booth, the genteel suits, the exotic stranger. Nerves alone would have been enough to set her ears on fire; but when the flush rose from her shoulders and she turned entirely red, Eleanor began to suspect the sweet wine was a player as well. "You're beautiful," Alex said. The flush burned even brighter; Eleanor smiled and glanced at her plate, toyed with a fork, took a sip of water, shifted in the booth, then folded her hands. "Are you nervous?" she asked. "I didn't expect you to be so beautiful." Those were magic words. The flush began to recede, slowly at first but then it was just gone, disappeared, as if it had never been. Alex wasn't Miguel -- not her smart, funny, kind Miguel. Miguel made her feel safe. Miguel wouldn't have been nervous, and he'd have seen to it that Eleanor wasn't either. Miguel was her love, not Alex. Eleanor's ... what was it, a crush? Simple curiosity? Lust maybe? Whatever it was, it was gone before it ever got going. It was just that time was a factor: it took her more than two years to screw up the nerve to speak to Alex, then there were a few months courting to get to that fateful first dinner. Should she have been surprised, then, that it took her more than two years to get back out?
