Velvet Was the Night

He didn't know what the words meant, but he knew what they sounded like: it was the sound of sadness.

Maite understood little, but she grasped this: that beneath banal phrases and appeals to the good of the nation something dangerous simmered.

Love, frail as gossamer, stitched together from a thousand songs and a thousand comic books, made of the dialogue spoken in films and the posters designed by ad agencies: love was what she lived for.

She loved the characters she found between the printed pages, and she suffered bitterly with them.

If they were both repeating the same motion in two different places, somehow it felt like they were doing it together. Which meant he wasn't really alone. He pictured two dust motes spinning in concentric circles. Maybe it was like that everywhere, for everyone. There was always someone doing the exact same thing... People simply didn't know it. Could be you were cutting vegetables with your left hand while it rained in Japan and a woman in Puebla was doing the same thing, and you both looked up at the sky at the same time and saw a bird fly by.

How she wanted someone to care about her! A thick, destructive yearning flamed inside her chest, and a flicker of emotion must have shown on Maite’s face because he chuckled and quickly added, “It’s not love. Not like that. We broke up.

In the end, you either fight or lie down to be trampled.

He walked and let the rain kiss him.

She had loved without restraint, and he'd left a stain upon her soul.

The world had smelled like this in the beginning, during creation, when the ocean raged and the creatures in the water multiplied, making the ocean teem with life.

They were both angry at the world, that was why this was happening. It was a kiss of scorpions, both heavy with poison. Both weary too. The tension and excitement of the past few days was the kindle they required

Even the fools in Tlaquepaque, with their healing crystals and their chants, believed in something. You had to be a bit afraid of a superior power. Those who weren’t were treading on dangerous soil.

She closed her eyes. She didn’t want to see any of that. There was such ugliness in the world.

Furthermore, she had gleaned enough about sophisticated fashions from the magazines that she wouldn’t stand out in such an environment. Oh, she’d chuck away the sensible shoes and the brown jackets for something with a little more pizzazz. At a place like that some glamour wouldn’t be unexpected, would it? Just a smidgen of it.

Apparently some of the Hawks had even been trained by the CIA, who didn’t want commies in Latin America and were assisting the Mexican government, which meant that Elvis received a top-notch education.

Maite wished she had been born in Monaco or New York. Most of the girls in the comic books she read looked like they’d never set a foot in places like the Doctores. If they had toiled in poverty, then they had been lifted to a higher plane by the fat wallet of their beloved. Cinderellas, dreaming. Maite dreamed too, but nothing came of

There was truth mixed with the lies, but you don't go wading into a swimming pool filled with vomit to try to drink fresh water.

he did miss scarfing garnachas at odd hours of the day.

Often life doesn’t make sense, and if Elvis had a motto it was that: life’s a mess.

We'll never know the exact number of victims of the Dirty War [Guerra Sucia]. My novel is noir, pulp fiction, but it's based on a real story.

Often life doesn't make sense, and if Elvis had a motto it was that: life's a mess. That's probably why he loved music and factoids. They helped him construct a more organized world.

That’s what his eyes were like: the night on the printed page. Blacker than the night outside the bus, the real and tangible night awaiting them here—

go wading into a swimming pool filled with vomit to try to drink fresh water.

She could not express her feelings, nor render the beating of her heart upon a page; she poured herself into every smile and every touch, attempting to clutch an ocean of passion between her hands for him.

The feeling that this was someone who devoured people, but never got his suit dirty.

As usual, the smile hid the fangs.

She was part of a story.

Some people are made to be lonely.

She had peered into the soul, the life, of another human being, and she had cut out a part of them and they'd never know it.

He had a treacherous smile.