Summer in the City

“Is having fun a rule? I internally roll my eyes at myself. Don’t be stupid, Elle. Though…maybe not so stupid. I can imagine exclusive clubs like these, the ones with a block-long line of gorgeous people in packs waiting in the rain to get in, would kick someone out just for looking like they weren’t having fun. Wouldn’t want a sourpuss ruining the mood, right? Maybe the magazine has strict orders to keep the ambience pleasant for all the entrepreneurs in their forties and fifties littering the dance floor, hiding their wedding bands in their pockets?”

This early glimpse inside Elle’s mind as she witnesses the wealth and extravagance around her at the exclusive club party shows how deep-rooted her judgements about money are. She assumes without proof that everyone without money is self-absorbed and without concept of morality.

“Do I look like the type of person who thinks all of this—the floor sticky with alcohol, my long dark hair wet with someone’s drink it accidentally dipped into, sweat sliding down the middle of my chest from all the proximity—is fun? Interesting. The idea I managed to blend into this crowd is a little…thrilling? This completely foreign, wild—”

This passage captures Elle’s discomfort in the nightclub setting and exposes her complicated relationship with visibility which also dictates her screenwriting career. Her rhetorical question distances herself from the crowd, signaling that she does not view herself as someone who naturally fits into this world—with people who actively live their own stories. Yet, her acknowledgment that it’s “thrilling” to blend in suggests a latent desire to escape her usual boundaries and experience something exciting and unfamiliar.

“This is my last night in New York City. Tomorrow, I’ll be across the country. For good. That’s why I agreed to wear this outfit, to be out past midnight, to have a last chance at my own movie moment.”

Elle’s framing of the evening as her last chance at her own movie moment illustrates her tendency to view life through a cinematic lens, also aligning with the motif of “movie moments” throughout the novel that support the theme of Becoming the Protagonist of Your Story. This passage hints at the tension between Elle’s desire for independence and control that she believes can’t coincide with letting life unfold unscripted.