Veronica

"She drew on her cigarette, blew out. 'Of course, you're a lot prettier than I was–-you'd have won the contest hands down!' She laughed. 'But prettiness is always about pleasing people. When you stop being pretty, you don't have to do that anymore. I don't have to do that anymore. It's my show now.' She said these words as if she were a movie star walking past me while I gaped. 

'I wasn't trying to please anyone, ' I said uncertainly.

'No?' She stubbed out her cigarette in a bright yellow ashtray. 'What were you trying to do?'

Imagine ten pictures of this conversation. In nine of them, she's the fool and I'm the person who has something. But in the tenth, I'm the fool and it's her show now. For just a second, that's the picture I saw."

Veronica
Mary Gaitskill