stale-smelling

I shoveled stale-smelling chili onto my plate and poked my fork at the lumpy chunks of beef, kidney beans, and vegetables.

What is certain is that its airiness is a delight when I pull off the stale-smelling N95 protective mask I must wear to go out for coffee.

“The house on Lark Avenue in East Harmony is tottering and shabby and at the edge of town, where no one, except Al Jarry, still lives. Invited amiably in, and seated in the stale-smelling, moldering, kipple-filled living room, I scanned by telepathic means the blurred, debris-cluttered, and hazy mind of Al Jarry seated across from me.”

That nurse, Elizabeth, looks at the clock and then at me before carrying a tray of stale-smelling food into another room.

“If only I’d let him pressure me into sex a decade ago,” she thinks at the film’s heart-wrenching climax, “I could now be sitting in a dingy, stale-smelling backstage area surrounded by fat blokes hundreds of miles from everyone I love. What a missed opportunity.”