As Eugene’s eyes became accustomed to the haze of the cigarettes and cigars swirling miasma-like he saw a woman, in serge, and gloves that crept like living tendrils up her normally ivory arms, but now sun-kissed as a blush, as the incarnadine discovery inside a conch shell seen for the first time by a bewildered zoologist as he is undone by its rosy, promising pinkness; those were her arms. But it was her eyes that stopped his breath; that made his heart leap up. Blue they were, even through the swirling vapors of pompous Chesterfields and arrogant Lucky Strikes he saw her eyes were a blue beyond blue, like the ocean. A blue he could swim into forever and never miss a fire engine red or a cornstalk yellow. Across the chasm of that room, that blue, those eyes, devoured him and looked past him and never saw him and never would, of that he was sure. From that moment, Eugene understood what the poets had been writing about these many years, all the lost, wandering, lonely souls who were now his brothers. He knew a love that would never be his. So quickly did he fall for her that no one in the room even heard the sound, the whoosh as he fell, the clatter of his broken heart. It was a sure silence, but his life was shattered.
0JustGoodScenes haa, I printed it and glued it on my current notebook :) "I think the larger question is this: in a novel crowded with great rolling mountains of prose, how is this moment profoundly different?" (or sth like that) freaking genius, indeed.
"And looked past him, and never saw him, and never would. Of that he was sure." This should have been kept. It so accurately depicted the self doubt of so many boys who feel unworthy, and overlooked. I feel this way all too often, not that I blame any woman for it though. It's my own head thay does this to me.
