It was kinda long

So, firstly: I'm not sure I agree about sexy Phil Collins although I think he has nice legs. I've been noticing legs lately. Especially nice legs.

Secondly: This *was* kinda long, but for the sake of blog navigation, I pared it to two paragraphs.

I'm wandering now.

Thirdly: Chatroulette is a really excellent word, despite what it means. I thought it was a French theorist, so I'm a little disappointed.

***

“You’re lying,” the German noticed, “but I will take your order because I notice something about you.” And she patted Swallow's back, pushed her fingers into Swallow's stringy hair. At that, Swallow pulled away, dragging against the stranger paws, but then the German flung her away and stood up.“You need to take me back,” the German said. “It’s time for you to buy a computer and let me go. Can you do that?”

Swallow felt her eyebrows pulling her forehead, and was hit by the silence of not knowing, of not possibly making it past the truth of isolation, but it was with a tingle somehow, an option out, and she so she stood up, the linen falling away, and reached out to grab Alina’s elbow, their skin brushing, but only in a brief proportion. “Sounds good,” Swallow said, before moving the German past the bureau and its filmy reflection. “I’ve always wanted to see your room.”

“There is no home for the likes of me,” muttered the German, as if reading Swallow’s desire. Swallow stopped her with a hand pressed against her face, at first missing the mouth and covering the German’s nose, but then slipping down and pressing, not gently, against her lips. Swallow shook her head, trying to knock something loose, and then removed her hand and led the German through the door and down the stucco hallway, pausing them only briefly at Letta’s door as if to assess the silence, before continuing down past the library.

Love that library, she had thought, delirious, the German’s elbow in her thin toy fingers. So traditional, and so incredibly immense, like a ballroom or a church—larger perhaps in her mind, but this too she knew. Its tables—three different ones, including two wooden and one plastic, and the two wooden of different eras with different commitment to baroque ornamentation—set at different angles and with different piles of clutter or neatness, as if Letta had decided beforehand which would been given over to chaos, and why. The most curlicued table was also the messiest and held, from the catalogue of Swallow’s memory, mostly seeds and seedpods, whereas the plastic one was set for papers and notebooks, tucked into exceedingly tidy piles along the five feet of its surface, one after another after another. If Swallow had to guess, which she did, the third—wooden but plain—was Letta’s actual workspace, and couldn’t be condemned as messy any more than it could be lauded as neat. It seemed, from an outside perusal, to be an accurate tsunami of thought: feathers and three slides with something intrinsically tiny and complex, two notebooks—one open with neatly penned numbers (Swallow felt guilty, wondered if she was doing enough work) and the other closed and maybe covered stern to bow with neat figurations in Italian, a plate rimmed with the refuse of olive oil and a tomato stem, seven cups (Swallow had counted, amused: four that must have held coffee, two blank, and the last with a reservoir of red liquid and several floating bodies, fruit flies perhaps), and then a random smattering of napkins, paperclips, a stapler, plastic bags, an ashtray with tiny seashells, leaves, an old-fashioned typewriter with a flier caught in its wheels, several clay sculptures obviously made by the same person (who seemed to have a fondness for metaphorical dick-vulva combos), and a pair of running shoes with socks stuffed into their body. And all this without regard to the bookshelves lining every corner of the room, including the small section behind the door.