Watching her reflection in the television screen, she practices smoking, leaning heavy into the couch cushion. Her friends look silly when they try to light a cigarette, wincing as if on Fear Factor and asked to chew through a hundred-year-old egg. She doesn’t see the point if you’re not going to enjoy it. Which is not to say that she does. She’s looking for things to be remembered for after they’ve graduated, gotten soft, and had three children with men they met at their first jobs. As if, twenty years from now, they’ll gather for a girls’ weekend and the prettiest of them will note the curl of smoke escaping her lips, washing over her tongue like mist, and sigh, “You always were the cool one. And you haven’t changed a bit.”
READER
South Asian female, early 20s, with short brown bob, wearing white wool sweater underneath open blue peacoat, three charms hanging from a long golden chain around her neck.
Herzog
Saul Bellow
(Penguin, 2003)
p 105