“Anyway, I’d like to want a relationship,” he said, “because everybody else does, and it looks nice.”

“Intimacy to me is two people sitting in front of a candle listening to important music nude,” she said. “Thinking it means something that you both love the same video and neither of you could finish The Sot-Weed Factor. I was out with someone the other day and I said I didn’t like sushi. I called it ‘whale gums,’ and he said, ‘Really? You don’t like it? I hate it, too.’ And it was like he was saying, ‘Finally! Somebody who understands me!’ ”

“We live in America,” he said. “Everyone who speaks English understands you. How they interpret you is something else.”

“There’s usually one thing that targets somebody for you,” she said. “Like, he says something nasty about shrinks, and you say, ‘Oh, you don’t like shrinks? I think they’re awful, too. You can do it yourself, everyone did for years. What did the pioneers do? I can’t cut down that tree, I’ve got a noon appointment with my therapist? My shrink told me killing Indians was acting out aggression?’ ”

“I’ve noticed that people who admit they’re lonely and angry tend to clump together,” he said. “Like that’s enough of a common denominator. A little club of dissatisfied people filled with angst. Phi Beta Rage.”

“Phi Beta Rage,” she said. “I’m stealing that.”

“When you first meet someone on that first date, all the emergency adrenaline is there,” he said. “You bring out your best material as though you do it all the time. As though this is just a natural environment for the great parts of your personality to come through. And it’s not. It’s totally forced.”

“I went out with this senator,” she said, “who kept saying, ‘You are so terrific, what a great girl you are.’ And I thought, ‘Well, shut up about it!’ He was telling me what he thought I needed to hear, rather than what he really felt to be true. And if he really felt it to be true, I would know. I would be able to glean that he thought that. Anyway, I know I’m a terrific girl. I don’t want to be a terrific girl. That’s what I am for auditions. I want to be something else to someone.”