IJ study archive

not the Hope, the secrecy of it

quote

Not so much the Hope. The secrecy of it. That I hid it from her. That she’ll feel I had to hide it from her.

Context

The habit rerouted, exactly as it was for him in the pump-room, onto the concealment rather than the drug: what he cannot survive is not the smoking but the secrecy's coming to light, the fact that he hid it. The thing he is really addicted to, and really terrified of losing, is the No-One-Must-Know — and the confession is agonizing precisely because it dismantles that, not the Bob Hope.

In anthology