Merle by then was also spending a lot of time, not to mention money, on a couple of sisters named Madge and Mia Culpepper, who worked at the Hamilton Street establishment of Blinky Morgan's lady friend Nelly Lowry.
* * * * * * * * * *
Look, man. You can't fuck Æther. I mean, you can't, right? No, no, of course you can't because it doesn't technically exist. It's just a variable in a system to make the math come out correctly because a bunch of dodo-heads hadn't discovered everything there was to know about light yet.
When we first met Merle, he was running around with naked lady Chevrolette McAdoo. So we knew he was horny. Later we learned that he had intimate penis on lady penis relations with Erlys resulting in his child, Dally (aren't we currently in the story to discover how he met Erlys? So many tangents!). So it's no surprise to find out that he loves sex workers.
Are Madge and Mia prostitutes? Well, their last name sort of means "Ass Pepper" if you read it bilingually using French and English. That sounds like something that would cost Merle a lot of money.
I suppose what we're supposed to glean from this passage is that Merle is horny and lonely, the perfect conditions for somebody to fall in love at first sight!
"Nelly Lowry"
If I'm willing to trust the Internet on the origin of names and what they mean, which I am sort of willing to do even though I feel, deep in my bones, that I'm being had, the name Nelly means "Light". It also means "conspicuously effeminate". I think it's often used as the name of a horse but maybe I just watched the same exact cartoon with a horse names Nelly so many times that it feels like it's a common thing.
Anyway, it's the "light" meaning that's important. To understand why, you should read the cover of your copy again. Also the quote by The Loneliest Monk.
Lowry means "laurel" in Scottish which may or may not be important depending on what themes you're trying to shove into this book for whatever paper you're writing. Like maybe you can find a link between Merle screwing sex workers and that Grecian Urn. Or maybe getting laid can be seen as some kind of victory, even if you have to pay for it (which you totally should if you want to. Don't let not wanting to pay for sex keep you from having sex if you can't get some sex. It's an absolutely viable and non-embarrassing method to get you some).
"Blinky Morgan"
That's the guy whose gang stole the furs and killed a cop which made all the local cops feel like they can use a lot more of their self-named style of brutality on whomever they think looks despicable. The name also reminds me of that character in David Lynch's sitcom, On the Air. You know the character! The one who sees 25.62 times more than the average person!
