Sexus by Henry Miller — Read

Two or three days later I met Mara for the first time in broad daylight. I was waiting for her in the Long Island depot over in Brooklyn. It was about six in the afternoon, daylight saving time, which is a strange sun-lit rush hour that enlivens even such a gloomy crypt as the waiting room of the Long Island Railroad. I was standing near the door when I spotted her crossing the car tracks under the elevated line; the sunlight filtered through the hideous structure in shafts of powdered gold. She had on a dotted Swiss dress which made her full figure seem even more opulent; the breeze blew lightly through her glossy black hair, teasing the heavy chalk-white face like spray dashing against a cliff. In that quick lithe stride, so sure, so alert, I sensed the animal breaking through the flesh with flowery grace and fragile beauty. This was her daytime self, a fresh, healthy creature who dressed with utter simplicity, and talked almost like a child.

We had decided to spend the evening at the beach. I was afraid it would be too cool for her in that light dress but she said she never felt the cold. We were so frightfully happy that the words just babbled out of our mouths. We had crowded together in the motorman's compartment, our faces almost touching and glowing with the fiery rays of the setting sun. How different this ride over the roof-tops from the lonely anxious one that Sunday morning when I set out for her home! Was it possible that in such a short span of time the world could take on such a different hue? That fiery sun going down in the West-what a symbol of joy and warmth! It fired our hearts, illumined our thoughts, magnetized our souls. Its warmth would last far into the night, would flow back from below the curved horizon in defiance of the night. In this fiery blaze I handed her the manuscript to read. I couldn't have chosen a more favorable moment or a more favorable critic.