I had a good job, putting in a power plant for his nibs—he indicated the retreating Gordon with a disrespectful jerk of the thumb—but I quit … Do you think I'd work for this four-flusher if you were in the country? … You think Gordon is a false alarm?

She describes how Irina, left at home during one of Lawrence’s extended business trips, feels herself turning “into one of those dry Scandinavian crispbreads that never have enough salt.”

There was a series of windowlike slits in the castle wall.

A predicative in Russian is an uninflected word that regularly constitutes a complete utterance when standing alone, i.e., when preceded and followed by silence.