Sublime

My interest in other men isn’t about trying to trade Neal in. It’s about simultaneously experiencing something new—and who do we have here?—and something old—my younger, freer, less responsibility-bound self.

One of the agencies the package went to was Frederick Hill Associates in San Francisco, where Bonnie Nadell, a new associate who had worked in the subsidiary rights department at Simon & Schuster when Less Than Zero was published,

Nutella, the spread of holidays, a chocolated knife lying across the upturned lid, brioche, croissant crumbs and a carton of orange juice, all gently congealing beneath the shade of a dirty Heineken parasol.

He drank and smoked too much, he had no money, he had the neuroses of a beta male and the know-it-all confidence of an alpha male.