Page 47

By Jack Joseph Smith

mountains for a long time. You are skinny like a hermit, or a fisherman," "Better stick to fishing," keeping with his mouth being shaped to clowning. "No, I am serious. You do, really you do." "Sax Fifth Avenue." "Sax Fifth Avenue?" "I'm fit for the expansion of the universe." "You have been mentioning that." "I just got to keep those letters coming in." "Your just being a goof." "A goof?" "You know I didn't say that." "It's a small world, and I never gossip." Intent, she said, "I think talk like "goof" is weakness," He was quivering in his throat, and the close force of her demanded his mind slowly outside of time, back to a senseable calm. "You look something like a shark, when you are real," she continued. "Thank you," he replied, feeling an astranged beauty clinging to his mind like a new membrane. All the while she felt careful with him; gave grace to the lift of her hand, as if it were the

Original Scan

Page 47

AI Interpretation

GPT

The page keeps the flirtation sharp and unstable, letting the woman's teasing push Animal out of his performed ease and back toward exposed feeling.

The talk is comic on the surface, but each joke tightens the emotional pressure. Animal's clowning, claims of cosmic largeness, and goofiness all meet the woman's sharper intelligence, which makes him feel desire as something close, embarrassing, and physically present.

Claude

Lithetes calls him skinny like a hermit or fisherman and tells him talking 'goek' is weakness, and Animal feels an estranged beauty cling to his mind like a new membrane. The page is where her teasing starts to draw real feeling out of his clowning.