Why should I believe any of this?' It happens that fast. I say, because I think I like you. Marla says, 'Not love?' This is a cheesy enough moment, I say. Don't push it.

Why do I do anything?' she says. 'I'm educated enough to talk myself out of any plan. To deconstruct any fantasy. Explain away any goal. I'm so smart I can negate any dream.

Find out what you're afraid of and go live there.

Where I'm is one of those stair climbing machines the agent has installed. You climb and climb forever and never get off the ground. You're trapped in your hotel room. It's the mystical sweat love lodge experience of our time, the only sort of Indian vision quest we can schedule into our daily planner.Our Stair Master to Heaven.

Everyone has something wrong. And for a while, her heart just sort of flat lined.

A hotel, he told me, was a big house where a lot of people lived and ate and slept, but no one knew each other. He said that described most families in the outside world.

In light this bright, after so long in the dark, everything we can see is only black and white. Only glaring shape-outlines we have to blink against.