ciao, darling I'll call you!

At his call she would come up to him and give him a quick kiss with wide-open eyes, while he held her upright like a ladder, his hands on her two arms, as though she were a thing without equilibrium, and would, once he relinquished hold, fall stiffly backward to the floor. This is the kiss that comes in with the second year of marriage, succeeding the bridegroom kiss (which is rather stagey at best, say those who know about such things, and apt to be copied from passionate movies).

Then came supper, and after that they went out for a walk, up two blocks and through Central Park, or sometimes to a moving picture, which taught them patiently that they were the sort of people for whom life was ordered, and that something very grand and brave and beautiful would soon happen to them if they were docile and obedient to their rightful superiors and kept away from pleasure.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, “O Russet Witch”

In the early days of their marriage, Benjamin had worshipped her. But, as the years passed, her honey-colored hair had become an unexciting brown, the blue enamel of her eyes assumed the aspect of cheap crockery — moreover, and most of all, she had become too settled in her ways, too placid, too content, too anemic in her excitements, and too sober in her taste. As a bride, it had been she who “dragged” Benjamin to dances and dinners — now conditions were reversed. She went out socially with him, but without enthusiasm, devoured entirely by that eternal inertia which comes to live with each of us one day and stays with us to the end.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”

All life was weather, a waiting through the hot where events had no significance for the cool that was soft and caressing like a woman’s hand on a tired forehead.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Jelly Bean”

ciao, darling I'll call you!

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