1
Without pride, man becomes a parasite — and there are already too many parasites.Carla H. Krueger
2
Shame comes in different doses.Carla H. Krueger
3
It’s late and most of the clerks are at home in their beds, dreaming of swimming in pools filled with real money.Carla H. Krueger
4
Don’t mock my suggestions, Ridley — one day in the near future, they might just save your life.” Maxwell D. Kalist.Carla H. Krueger
5
Men circle like bees around honey, buzzing to communicate their sexual despair.Carla H. Krueger
6
Only men with intelligence, confidence and absolutely no empathy at all can progress upstairs.Carla H. Krueger
7
Every time I so much as blink you get an erection.Carla H. Krueger
8
To Kalist, Baumauer’s just a timber bridge in need of a good hot fire.Carla H. Krueger
9
He’s in a side room alone with her and it’s far too fucking hot.Carla H. Krueger
10
You are a more powerful person than you might have ever imagined.” Maxwell D. Kalist.Carla H. Krueger
11
Are there not times, Ridley, when you yourself wish only to hear the best in people — and not to be dragged downwards into the underworld we all regularly inhabit?Carla H. Krueger
12
I’m warning you because you’re young and vulnerable. He’s a dirty, lying, conniving piece of shit and he’s dangerous.” Gottfried Baumauer.Carla H. Krueger
13
Maxwell D. Kalist is a receiving teller at a city bank, Orwell and Finch, where he runs an efficient department of twenty two clerks and twelve junior clerks. He carries a leather-bound vade mecum everywhere with him — a handbook of the most widely contravened banking rules. He works humourlessly (on the surface of it) in a private, perfectly square office on the third floor of a restored grain exchange midway along the Eastern flank of KvÄ›tniv’s busy, modern central plaza. Behind his oblong slate desk and black leather swivel chair is an intimidating, three-storey wall made almost entirely of bevelled, glare-reducing grey glass in art-deco style; one hundred and thirty six rectangles of gleam stacked together in a dangerously heavy collage.Carla H. Krueger
14
Each day of the week, Kalist indulges himself in a different, secret ritual. On Mondays, he wears cologne. On Tuesdays, he eats meat for lunch. On Wednesdays, he places a bet after work. On Thursdays, he smokes one cigarette (but claims he’s not a smoker). On Fridays, he treats himself to his favourite pastime: horse practice — he grew up with horses and likes to try and emulate their distinctive whinnies, snorts, neighs, snuffles, sighs, grunts, fluttering nostrils, the occasional aggressive outburst and the especially beautiful nicker of a mare to her foal. And, on Saturdays, lest we forget, Maxwell D. Kalist drinks wine from a chalice.Carla H. Krueger
15
Secrets are dangerous.” Gottfried Baumauer.Carla H. Krueger