"Preoccupied about anything? Not so high as the one shell make you pay if you cant get this goddam door closed again, Paulie.
Annie turned to him and smiled again. It was snowing outside, the first real snow of the year, and they said wed have a foot by the next morning. It had yawned wide open again, and the book rushed toward its climax the way the best ones did, as if on a rocket sled. Then Annie was swerving up the side lawn, using it to turn, and her gaze fell on Paul for one second and Paul felt sure he knew what that momentary gaze meant.
He wanted to tell her so much, wanted to tell her even though he knew that a ravening paranoid like Annie would reject what was so obvious. "What have you been doing?
He had once asked for them in a timid and tentative voice, and she had given him a look of such utter darkness that he had told her at once to forget it. I had to, because your car being gone meant that you could really stay, you could really finish my book.