“It doesn’t have to make sense. She’s gifted,” Brigit says, spitting out Simone’s favorite word for Dana but meaning the opposite. Wallace laughs. Gifted is the sweetness meant to make the bitterness of failure palatable—that a person can fail again and again, but it’s all right, because they’re gifted, they’re worth something. That’s what it all tracks back to, isn’t it, Wallace thinks. That if the world has made up its mind about what you have to offer, if the world has decided it wants you, needs you, then it doesn’t matter how many times you mess up. What Wallace wants to know is where the
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