She’s sad because she’s drinking to be sad because she’s afraid that what she does not feel is actually a feeling. Typical post-modern Manhattan bull… - Lucius Shepard

An attic's the afterlife of a house," said Otille, opening the door. "Or so my mother used to say.

And that in itself was a sufficient reason to hit him, purely for educational purposes: I had, you see, reached the level of drunkenness at which an amoral man such as myself understands his whimsies to be moral imperatives.

Doubt concerning their mental well-being creeps in. Is this an instance of healing or a freak scene? Are they two very different people who have connected on a level new to both of them, or are they emotional burnouts who aren’t even talking about the same subject and have misapprehended mild sexual attraction for a moment of truth? Just how much difference is there between those conditions?