How to light a cigarette
His voice seems to have just arrived here, to have come into the room in the loose slack of a pause when the air had nothing to do but gather around him as if he were the hero in a Russian novel,leaning against the mantelpiece with his hands in his pockets and the mirror loving him from behind. Look how he bends his neck,how he cups his hand as he lights his cigarette before he answers.Look at her watching the blue grey smoke unravel into a scurry of notes running across a stave as she listens to the way he stresses his consonants,softens his vowels as he talks of the war in his perfect French.
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