Sublime

xenia?’

yet she was not old enough to content herself with brooding over the past like Marcel Proust, whose book she was reading on the plane, and who obviously had nothing more pressing to do than regard the years as a museum filled with beautiful reproductions of lost jealousy and bygone fashion. In another sense, she felt herself to be an Innocent Virgi

She went to leotard shops, and tea- and coffee-seller shops, and museum shops, and toy shops and record shops, book shops and jewelry shops, all on one block, and decided New York was a shopping mall, pure and simple.

A blonde girl with Estonian slanting green eyes and high, wide cheekbones made an English teacher apologize in front of an entire class for telling her to be quiet during a test—her pout was devastating and tragic and universally personal.

That’s what Marilyn did; she gave her body to the post–World War II archetypes of sport, art, and politics. She was the lover of—at least for—classic greatness. Pam’s in the same position, but she has to be the lover of postmodern greatness. That’s why we all had to watch her give a blow job to the drummer from Mötley Crüe.

The Pier People whose understanding of Max came from seeing him at an occasional party or from hearing Jacaranda talk about him could not imagine later on why she came to think of him as such a threat.

The Barge Max had two kinds of friends. Jacaranda was in the handful of people he took up with because he was in Los Angeles.