“Something flickers across his bloodshot eyes. Pain.”

“The ghost of a smile flickered across his lips. ‘You’re always the voice of reason. Just try listening to yourself once in a while.”

“I tried to think of something good to ask of him. “Do you always do this?Rescue girls from embarrassment?”Surprise flickered across his face and then there was something else I couldn’t recognize.“No..” he said softly. “Not always.”There was something in the way he said that, which felt like there was something else underneath the words I wasn’t catching.”

“From then on, my thesis hung over me like a curse, and with bloodshot eyes, I worked like a madman.”

“His great carved wooden head was marked with a black eye that was more yellow than black and from this spectacular bed of bruised flesh the eye itself, sand irritated, bloodshot, as wild as a currawong's, stared out at a landscape in which the tops of fences protruded from windswept sand.”

“Eyes bloodshot, I want to say. Eating a lot of Cheetos. Staring into space. Eating moreCheetos. It must be love. What else could it possibly be?”