“She sits and listens with crossed legs under the batik house-wrap she wears, with her heavy three-way-piled hair and cigarette at her mouth and refuses me - for the time being, anyway - the most important things I ask of her. It's really kind of tremendous how it all takes place. You'd never guess how much labor goes into it. Only some time ago it occurred to me how great an amount. She came back from the studio and went to take a bath, and from the bath she called out to me, "Darling, please bring me a towel." I took one of those towel robes that I had bought at the Bon Marche' department store and came along with it. The little bathroom was in twilight. In the auffe-eua machine, the brass box with teeth of gasburning, the green metal dropped crumbs inside from the thousand-candle blaze. Her body with its warm woman's smell was covered with water starting in a calm line over her breasts. The glass of the medicine chest shone (like a deep blue place in the wall, as if a window to the evening sea and not the ashy fog of Paris. I sat down with the robe over my; shoulder and felt very much at peace. For a change the apartment seemed clean and was warm; the abominations were gone into the background, the stoves drew well and they shone. Jacqueline was cooking dinner and it smelled of gravy. I felt settled and easy, my chest free and my fingers comfortable and open. And now here's the thing. It takes a time like this for you to find out how sore your heart has been, and, moreover, all the while you thought you were going aroundidle terribly hard work was taking place. Hard, hard work, excavation and digging, mining, moiling through tunnels, heaving, pushing, moving rock, working, working, working, working, panting, hauling, hoisting. And none of this work is seen from the outside. It's internally done. It happens because you are powerless and unable to get anywhere, to obtain justice or have requital, and therefore in yourself you labor, you wage and combat, settle scores, remember insults, fight, reply, deny, blab, denounce, triumph, outwit, overcome, vindicate, cry, persist, absolve, die and rise again. All by yourself? Where is everybody? Inside your breast and skin, the entire cast.”

“She raises her hands and places them on either side of my face. My skin burns beneath her touch. 'I think you're beautiful.'I smile, thinking she's done. But she releases my face and places her palms on my chest, directly over my heart.'You're beautiful right here,' she says.I close my eyes, and the breath rushes from my lungs.'I see the good in you, Dante,' Charlie continues, her words rolling together off her tongue. 'Even if you don't, I do. You have a good heart. You know how I know?'I open my eyes. She's looking at me like nothing else in the world exists. Like the entire planet and all of mankind just vanished. She slowly wraps my hands inside her own as best she can and places them on her chest. 'Because I feel it here.' She taps our hands against her chest. 'I know you're good, Dante. Because I feel it inside of me.”

“I don’t understand. She’s always been so friendly toward me.”“Yes, so long as your work consisted of updating calendars and photocopying golf club bylaws.”“But there was no danger of my taking her place!”“She was never afraid of that.”“Then why denounce me? Why would it upset her if I went to work for you?”“Miss Mori struggled for years to get the job she has now. She probably found it unbearable for you to get that sort of promotion after being with the company only ten weeks.”“I can’t believe it. That’s just so … mean.”“All I can say is that she suffered greatly during the first few years she was here.”“So she wants me to suffer the same fate? It’s too pathetic. I must talk to her.”“Do you really think that’s a good idea?”“Of course. How else are we going to work things out if we don’t talk?”“You just talked to Mister Omochi. Does it strike you that things have been worked out?”

“And the blood pulses hard, too hard, and some sweet internal assailant comes and quickly shreds the muscles of her shoulders and neck, and soon everything will fall and dissipate, nose and ears and the three gray cells she has left, and with all her strength she tries to calm down, she must stop this, but she is unable to give up these heartbeats, the forgotten precise heartbeats which reply as an echo, and she remembers his hand upon the tablets of her heart, her hand on his chest--feel it, our prisoners are corresponding. But how? She is amazed. How did I let Shaul lead me on like this? Where have I been all evening? But she knows exactly how and where, what she was listening to and what her heart went out to. Look at you, she sighs. No, really, look at you, you and your reaching heart.”

“But as I stood watching her, I realized how truly hard it was,really, to see someone you love change right before your eyes. Not only is it scary, it throws your balance off as well. This was how my mother felt, I realized, over the weeks I worked at Wish, as she began to not recognize me in small ways, day after day. It was no wonder she'd reacted by pulling me closer, frcibly narrowing my world back to fit insider her own. Even now, as I finally saw this as the truth it was, a part of me wishing my mother would stand up straight, take command, be back in control. But all I'd wanted when she was tugging me closer was to be able to prove to her that the changes in me were good ones, ones she'd understand if she only gave them a chance. I had that chance now. While it was scary, I was gong to take it.~Macy, pgs 351 and 352”

“I understood her hrythm. That feeling of everything inside twisting to the point that if you didn't find a release you'd explode. I craved to grant her peace. I placed my hand over hers. My own heart rested when i rubbed my thumb over her smooth skin. She dropped the pen and grasped hes sleeve in her palm, her constant defense mechanism. No. If she grasped anything, it would me. My thumb worked its way between her fingers and her sleeve and released her death grip on the material. I wrapped my fingers around her fragile hand. Touching Echo felt like home. Her ring figer slid against mime, causing electricity to move through my bloodstream. She moved it again. Only this time the movement was slow, deliberate and the most seductive touch in the world. Everything inside of me ached to touch her more. Beth had been both wrong and right. Echo couldn’t hurt anyone, especially when she seemed so breakable herself. But the need I felt to be the one to keep the world from shattering her only confirmed Beth’s theory. I was falling for her and I was fucked.”