We headed back to the main part of the yard, and I had the odd sensation that I was a movie camera being rolled forward into the midst of the party-goers. Elektra had her arm in mine, and it felt as if she were guiding me along.
“How’re you doing, lover?” she asked me.
“Okay,” I said.
Just [...]

Elektra had taken another drag from the reefer and passed it on to Sammy.
“Steve,” she said, “you are too much, man.”
“I beg your pardon,” he said. I noticed he was holding a bottle of beer. But at least it was only beer. He didn’t seem drunk at all. Not yet. “But Alicia –”
“Elektra,” she said.
“Elektra, [...]

It was all very interesting chatting with Frank Sinatra, I suppose, but to tell the truth I was getting hungry, so I was glad when Dick came over and told us he had a brand-new batch of burgers ready to go.
Elektra and I excused ourselves from Frank and went over to the charcoal grill with [...]

“Well, look at you!” called Steve. “Don’t you look gorgeous!”
Elektra raised her arms, she had a small black purse on a long strap in her hand, and she did a twirl as she crossed the lamplit street, her red and black dress flying around her and then settling on her figure as she strode toward [...]

Miss Evans came around to the front of the porch, put one foot on the first porch step, but hesitated.

I made my way out the side entrance in a successful maneuver to avoid my mother and aunts.

I said nothing. What could I say? It seems to me that for years I talked to people, and they talked to me, primarily in a sort of code composed almost entirely of clichés, a code whose purpose was not the transmission of meaning but the lack of meaning

I dreamt that I was walking along the roofs of an enormously long train, trying to reach the locomotive.

Charlotte,” said Steve, smiling as if mysteriously.

Miss Rathbone sat down and poured Steve a glass of ice water.