Re: Cat + Jack: booze and books
"You sound like you might want to burn yourself on that pyre, Jack. Is reading really all that bad?" she asked, though she suspected there was some semblance of memory attached, something she was unfamiliar with and unaware of. And Cat didn't mind dangerous. She liked risks, and she hardly took any recently. It was a shame, really, because there was nothing to get the heart pounding like risks taken and overcome.
"Anne was a product of her time. You want the Brontës to act and write like modern women? Tsk. You know that's impossible, and every writer reflects their time. Even the progressive ones? Still lived when they lived, and the Brontës? Were fairly daring. After all, they wrote about sex out of marriage, didn't they?" He preached about women and carnality, and the choir chuckled. "Your Bovary? Probably couldn't get a divorce, no matter how miserable she was." As for carnality? "People get tired of eating the same thing each and every day, and that's the secret to cheating." Was she baiting? Oh, certainly.
"Dickinson mourns never having it, and that's still mourning, whatever your opinion on the matter. Is there nothing you yearned for, but never got? Do you not mourn that?" She scoffed, and she took another swallow of her drink. "It's entitled to say only lovers can mourn, Jack."
He recited, and it was obvious, about two lines in, that she liked what he was saying. It was all over her face, because why bother hiding what she liked? No point in it, and she nodded, inclined her head and dark curls springing free of their confines. "I like it. Is it a man or woman? Auden?"
As for his windows and doors? "Isn't that convenient? You're the only person I've talked to so far who was that lucky." Her expression said she didn't believe him, not for an instant. "And I absolutely made a killing." She grinned.