the last book I ever read (A Hall of Mirrors by Robert Stone, excerpt one)

from A Hall of Mirrors by Robert Stone:

It was light but sunless. The sky was a low gray sheet over an eternity of wet witchgrass that stretched to meet it in far-off mist; it was gray desolation, a waste. He lit a cigarette and watched it sweep by the window. The bottle, he remembered, was empty at his feet.

Where was it he had gone to sleep? Gulls. A foghorn. The sea? A hotel porch where electric light shone on tortured iron flowers. Mobile. And it was New Orleans; he was going to New Orleans now.