Henry shook his head, 'I was drunk,' he said, trying to sound both ashamed and firm in this belief. He remembered the rosebush incident very clearly, of course, but he knew that sneaking into the bedroom window of his fiancee's little sister wasn't something he wanted to explain to his father. Sometimes, Henry reflected, being taken for a perpetual drunk was sort of convenient.

So this is how life was, she thought with a faint smile: It wore you down until you emerged at its wildest, most unexpected ends.

She had rarely been near Henry since then, and the sight of him now was like a concentrated dose.

She felt so much aware of her own beauty it seemed inconceivable that everybody else wouldn't notice the difference too.

It is a fact of big cities that one girl's darkest how is always another's moment of shining triumph, and New York is the biggest and cruelest city of them all.

It's the craziest thing, but I can't stop thinking about you.

Henry closed his eyes and imagined the sweet petulant woundedness with which she had stared at him on the beach. He felt a little proud that she could love him.