Eggs cuss and snap on the kitchen stove. (2)
Clare, the sound Madeleine’s toilet makes when it’s dry. (3)
His voice is close shaven. (26)
She could sneak in there, but she must be quiet, like cancer. (88)
The way that woman walked, like she was paying the sidewalk a favor. (96)
…all from within the first hundred pages of 2A.M. at The Cat’s Pajamas, by Marie-Helene Bertino, an author with whom I’m fairly certain I’ve waged eerily charming (but ultimately losing) verbal battles in non-smoky taverns at forty-five-percent occupancy facing a nicked and scraped wooden bartop on three separate continents in which she blinked too much and I spilled my beer and no less than three song lyrics were quoted and at least one jazz song referenced in such a way that that both of us knew but were unwilling to admit that neither of us had ever actually listened to it.