"Breakfast at Tiffany's" [.]

[fiefoe]

In both "The Diamond Guitar" and "House of Flowers" ('The house where they lived and worked was rickety, thin as a steeple, and frosted with fragile, bougainvillaea-vined balconies.'), love is compromised, but remains tender.

• But now her smile was fragmentary, it clung to her lips like cake crumbs.
• grinned at her like split watermelons
• Of the seasons, spring is the most shattering
  

"A Christmas Memory" is mostly about joyful enumerations: things his friend never did, and did do; the mouth-watering shopping list for fruitcake ingredients; their hard-earned savings: 'Dollar bills, tightly rolled and green as May buds. Somber fifty-cent pieces, heavy enough to weight a dead man's eyes. Lovely dimes, the liveliest coin, the one that really jingles. Nickels and quarters, worn smooth as creek pebbles. But mostly a hateful heap of bitter-odored pennies.'

• (shelling pecan:) Caarackle! A cheery crunch, scraps of miniature thunder sound as the shells collapse and the golden mound of sweet oily ivory meat mounts in the milk-glass bowl.
• The black stove, stoked with coal and firewood, glows like a lighted pumpkin.
• In answer, my friend gently reflects: "I doubt it. There's never two of anything."
• Home: Queenie slumps by the fire and sleeps till tomorrow, snoring loud as a human.
• Out (the light) goes, exposing the starlight, the stars spinning at the window like a visible caroling that slowly, slowly daybreak silences.
  

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Commencement season:  Stephen King advocates stewardship rather than ownership mentality; Barbara Kingsolver - "Scarcity is the mother of morality."