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He asks her to get on her knees before unwrapping a piece of hard candy and placing it into his hand.

She looked at the old couch in the otherwise empty lobby, the outdated travel posters on the wall, and the rather uninviting bowl of hard candy sitting on the counter.

Once again, our heroine is a steely, scrappy young woman who has a single vice — Weaving’s Grace had a penchant for cigarettes; Barrera’s Joey gobbles hard candy.

She recently read a few out loud to me that sounded like a gloriously mundane piece of postmodern poetry: “lettuce wraps,” “scrambled egg,” “bloody Mary,” “puff pastry,” “hard candy,” “light beer.”

“You need orange juice, stat. Whenever my uncle used to get the shakes, OJ would fix him right up. That or honey or hard candy.”