The strange part is, they were forever running around yelling at people to get naked, to strip off their masks and let the sunshine in on their most secret faces, their true and deadly dangerous and lovely selves. Not me, boy—the more costumes, the better, you want my opinion. Masks on top of masks, images like layers of winter underwear, that’s more like it. Costumes brighten the air, and they still let you get your practicing done. Naked people don’t do either one, hardly ever.
The day that he quit his job at Thumper’s—early spring and a new entree called Hippety Haunches proving an irresistible combination—Farrell spent looking desultorily for construction work and for someone who might be able to build a wooden case for the lute. By five o’clock he had come conditionally to terms with a cheerful Bengali cabinetmaker and he was feeling lazily adventurous and pleased with himself when he wandered down to the South Forty for coffee and baklava, a Holborne tune he had never been able to finger correctly suddenly beginning to explain itself to him.
There never were any empty tables at this time of day. He sat at a table near the door, next to a young man wearing white chinos, Hush-Puppies, and a purple shirt with a map of the Hawaiian islands on it. The sky was full of little shadow-bellied clouds, but the air was honey-warm and seemed to have golden bubbles in it, like honey; and everyone walking on Parnell, from the backpacking Amazons to the tattooed, expectant motorcyclists, moved as lingeringly as if they were journeying through honey, in that hour.