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unearths some literary gems.
From The Grave Maurice, by Martha Grimes:
***She laughed the way some people sneezed, an ah-ha-ah-ha-ah-ha that segued into a brief explosion.***An apology dialectic, you could say, laying the groundwork for future apologies, if need be.***[Who Needs Context? dept.]"But it's such a good nothing. The design is good."***[Who Needs Context? dept.]"Meat loaf in the collective unconscious? Why doesn't that sound right?"***Diane actually spilled a few drops of her drink, bringing the glass down on the table in martini applause.***She was essence, all residue left back in the bottom of the bottle, a girl decanted.***The Little Chef version was merely a shadow on the wall of Plato's cave.***All of this leaving Melrose feeling the evening hadn't so much as [sic] ended as collapsed around him, collapsing and elongating like a bellows or in a wind tunnel with some Proustian crazy.***When Jury walked into the breakfast room the following morning, time had been restored to its familiar sequential meanderings.***"I'm taking a page from Diane's book.""There's only one page in Diane's book....Take it, and there won't be any book."***"You're obsessive about obsession."***These were probably not all of the [answering-machine] messages; they were the ones selected by Carol-anne, those of which she approved and out of which she fashioned her short list, as if the messages were competing for the Booker Prize.***Was she splurging on non sequiturs tonight?***Even her toes shrugged.***"We'll beef tea him!"***[In which Grimes puts the "op" in onomat-op-oeia. See, it's not a champagne cork, so it's not a "pop." It's Bridget Riley, not Roy Lichtenstein.]The action of pulling made a pleasant little op and he poured the wine into the glasses.***
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