Fresh Complaint

No one knew what the original music sounded like. You had to make an educated guess and do the best you could. For whatever you played there was no indisputable tuning or handwritten schematic, and the visa you needed in order to see the Master’s keyboard was always denied. Sometimes you thought you heard the music, especially when you were young, and then you spent the rest of your life trying to reproduce the sound.
Everybody’s life was early music.

Why was what Rodney did a job and what Rebecca did not a job? First of all, Rodney made money. Second, he had to warp his personality to suit his employer. Third, he disliked it. That was a sure sign that it was a job.

West Berlin wasn’t what Rodney had expected. It was nothing like early music. West Berlin was completely irrational and unmathematical, not stiff but loose. It was full of war widows, draft dodgers, squatters, anarchists. Rodney didn’t like the cigarette smoke. The beer made him feel bloated. So he escaped, going as often as he could to the Philharmonie or the Deutsche Oper.

Once, to amuse Diane, she’d ordered every male party guest to stick out his tongue. The men had obliged, asking no questions. Men always oblige. Men like being objectified.

Everyone knows that men objectify women. But none of our sizing up of breasts and legs can compare with the cold-blooded calculation of a woman in the market for semen. Tomasina was a little taken aback by it herself, and yet she couldn’t help it: once she made her decision, she began to see men as walking spermatozoa.

Blake believed in angelic recitation.

He held the door closed so that no one would barge in on him.

Using Asian toilets had made him limber: he could squat for ten minutes without strain.

He squinted at the silhouette hobbling toward him.

She lifted her foot and scowled at it.