““In the Novel He described her mouth as full of ashes. So when he kissed her finally he was thinking about ashes and the blacker rim just below the edge of the ashtray, and the faint dark rim that outlined her lips, and the lips themselves, at the limit of another darkness, farther and far more interior. Then the way the red, paling, just outside those lines caught fire and the pages caught soon after that. Slowly at first, but then all at once at the scalloped brown corners of each; like the ruff of an offended and darkening bird, extended, then folded in on itself; multiple, stiffening, gone.””
