the last book I ever read (Donald Antrim's The Hundred Brothers, excerpt eight)

from The Hundred Brothers: A Novel by Donald Antrim:

I crawled toward the shoe. It was Hiram’s right shoe, not the left. It rested beside its mate inside the open metal cage formed by the walker’s tubular framework. The shoe was a foot away from me. I was flat on my stomach. One dozen broken lilies were in my hands. These flowers were barely more than denuded stems. The stems were bent and their fallen petals lay scattered across the carpet. I inched forward. I suppose you could say I was sneaking up on Hiram’s shoe. I dragged myself along; I stayed low; I tracked my quarry. The carpet’s rank musk smelled delicious. I breathed in the smell. The shoe waited. It seemed to regard me. Tiny impressions punched in the uppers made lacy, delicate arabesques, heavenly swirls in the black leather.

Such thick soles.