The Chosen and the Beautiful

by Nghi Vo

Brief moments of sympathy and absent-minded kindness did not make a good man,

There are women who will forgive a great deal for a moment of kindness from a handsome man, but Daisy and the other older girls who had taken me under their wings had taught me not to be one of them.

It was no Mercury dime New York moon, but a harvest moon brought all the way from the wheat fields of North Dakota to shine with sweet benevolence down on the chosen and the beautiful.

The light had a particularly honey-like quality, something like summer in a half-remembered garden, illuminating without glaring and so abundant that you always knew who you were kissing.

“And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.” I said it defiantly, daring Nick to bring us back to our host.

“What’s the point of it all?” Daisy wondered. “What is the point of any of it?”

“And I might have thought that you would come up with something a little more original. I’m a New Yorker now, and therefore have higher expectations.”

“Happiness must come later, don’t you think?” she said in wonder. “When you want something so very much, and then you have it?”