The Lost Language of Cranes

Hope had stolen into his life just as he was growing comfortable with despair.

Cautiously his foot explored, wiggled as it could, and finally felt warm flesh under the pants leg.

Sometimes I think you are doomed to happiness

She looked toward the window, smiling away her life

Philip understood that there were people in the world like Eliot for whom love and sex came easy, without active solicitation, like a strong wind to which they had only to turn their faces and it would blow over them. He also understood that he was not one of those people. Instead, he seemed always to be eking out signals, interpreting glances, trying to extract some knowledge of another person's feelings from the most trivial conversations. Nothing came easy for him, and more often than not, nothing came of any of his efforts.