I stared at her. She was definitely not from New York. This one screamed Recent grad of Ohio State with a degree in the dramatic arts. Something told me she'd probably played a Pink Lady in some abysmal production of Grease and when someone asked her who she was, she said I'm an actor in the same breathy voice I'd seen people in AA announce I'm an alcoholic. Girls like her moved here by the truckload, hoping to be discovered and to meet Mr. Big but too often ended up in bars in Murray Hill wearing black dresses from Banana Republic, Band-Aids over the blisters on their heels. They'd get their I'll Take Manhattan taken off them soon enough. To live in this city for any extended period of time required masochism, moral flexibility, skin like an alligator's, and mad jack-in-the-box resilience- none of which these faux-confident twenty-very-littles could even begin to wrap their heads around. Within five years she'd be running home to her parents, a boyfriend named Wayne, and a job at her old high school, teaching movement.
Marisha Pessl