unearths some literary gems.
***
If there were ever a man who, like Nature, could fill a vacuum, it was Melrose Plant. He could fill in a black hole; he could void a universal void.
***
Wiggins was talking...not as if he'd caught a cold but as if he'd invented them. His comments were cold-proprietary.
***
Chilten held the pause long enough to put the gum in his mouth and crunch it around, as if even the Chiclet were part and parcel of the overall mystery. [And, as I may have noted before, I think Chiclets are funnier than other gums.]
***
[The protagonists are in an herb garden.]
Jury blinked, looked at Wiggins, who looked rueful. And as if mood were an herb indicator, he looked round for it, the rue.
***
"It's a long story, Jury." [...]
"I'm in the long-story business, Ronnie."
[later in the scene]
"That's anybody's guess."
"But we're not," said Wiggins..."in the anybody's-guess business."
***
Sebastian raised his eyebrows again, the only part of him that questioned Jury's presence. Even that question appeared rhetorical, however.
***
A member was declaiming, "Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish, rubbish"....Melrose sat, waiting for the final "rubbish."
***
Melrose had always loved the way London streets simply left off being what they were and started being something else, as if naming streets were nothing but whim.
***
She looked around, as if words hung in the air from which she might take the right one.
***
Melrose slid his stool back from the bar as if this proximity to impossible coincidence were too much to take.
***
