Bright Orange for the Shroud

p. 44

“Boone Waxwell had good wads of muscle on his shoulders. His waist had thickened and was beginning to soften. In posture, expression, impact, he had the stud look, that curiously theatrical blend of brutality and irony. Bogart, Mitchum, Gable, Flynn–the same flavor was there, a seedy, indolent brutality, a wisdom of the flesh. Women, sensing exactly what he was, and knowing how casually they would be used, would yet accept him, saying yes on a basis so primitive they could neither identify it nor resist it.”