Michael Malone - Weebly

"I see."
"I was raised by the Sisters of Mercy in Madder."
"Ah. Ah, yes." That explained it—the formal
diction, the reserve and quietness of her manner. Yet
there was something in her quietness as intense as
vociferous emotion would be in someone else.
Something that confused Abernathy and led him
into questions.
Everything, every ordinary social inquiry, seemed to
take on eerie tension with this woman. He felt flushed,
as if he and she confronted each other, not about a
phone call on behalf of a stranger, but at some much
deeper level. Perhaps his acute, almost painful
sensitivity (as if, he thought, he were under the influence
of some consciousnessraising drug), his awareness of
the weave of fabric in her white jacket, the slight muscle
strain at the sides of her mouth, the movement of one of
her hands against the other—perhaps all this resulted
from his exhaustion after last night, from the shock of
Beanie's departure.
Whatever the cause, his response was perplexingly
disproportionate to the context of their brief