“But Sylvia’s boyfriends had to be handsome. It was just a requirement.”
“she built her wardrobe around black and white cut with cherry red. Dressy black coats with red boots and red gloves, a read leather satchel, red ballerina flats, several red headbands—and endless tubes of wet red lipstick.”
“She would eat coleslaw and tomatoes with mustard on the beach, and feel salty and clean from swimming. The strapless drift of aqua cotton and ballet flats. The cake-mix taste of cheap beer.”
“Sylvia wasn’t particularly interested in baseball, but she was interested in swaggery men with big names and careers and big personalities to match.”
“Constantine—the son of a Russian general—declared that he hoped to die by suffocating in Sylvia’s blond pageboy.” <— (My BFF Lindsey Gates-Markel sent me these last two quotes before I even read the book because I mean how perfect is that.)
All of it. Delicious, ravishing. “Pretty words you could eat.”