Cleopatra and Frankenstein

"She was an artist, like you. With a I don't know how to say this well- an ego that is large but self-esteem that is small?" Cleo let out a husky laugh. "Sounds about right."

That is a dangerous thing.

Sometimes Santiago envied recovering alcoholics and drug addicts; at least they could abstain altogether. Food addicts still had to eat.

His family had taught him that the only way to be loved was to lie.

You could recognize an art student anywhere in the world, he thought. The quest for individuality had resulted in the opposite: complete predictability.

"I don't understand this obsession with happiness," she said. "Happiness is like the Hollywood sign. It's big, it's unattainable, and even if you do make it up there, what's there to do but come back down?"

I look at Frank. That was the thing about him. He noticed that. He noticed people. It was his gift. Or really, it was the gift he gave you. To be seen.

"The one thing I will not tolerate is absolutely anything less than perfection," says the woman in black walking ahead of me down Fifth.

"You don't stop bullshitting because you get old," she says.

"You get old because life's bullshit, I say.

"Frankenstein, she said, tracing his nose with her finger.

"Cleopatra" he said.

The night was a thousand black butterfly wings beating against her skin.