Chapter 20
As soon as Connie entered a room, and it didn’t matter what room it was, every eye was promptly on her. The volume increased, and I suppose the brightness, the very atmosphere, surged too. That every room suddenly became charged with energy upon her entrance was not simply the hopeless observation of my inexplicably smitten self; it was a fact. People spoke a little louder in the hope that she might overhear, put a little more heart into their laughter, a touch of eccentricity into their gesticulations. Peacocks. They reminded me of peacocks fluffing up their feathers in the presence of a peahen. And I watched them primp and preen in the hope of snatching her notice with a silently smug satisfaction that such efforts were beneath me. I didn’t need to vie for her attention. I already had it.