Shopgirl by Steve Martin At first just the name of the author grabbed my attention about this book. I've always liked Steve Martin in all of his roles, so I was curious about what kind of writer he'd be. Then I read the jacket and saw that it was about a lonely shy girl that gets into a relationship with a wealthy and older business man. Of course it appealed to my personality, so I decided to give it a try. I'm not sure if I like the book, but it did have a lot of passages that I identified with. Lisa wears high heels even to lunch. In fact, she overdresses for every occasion, because without the splash that her wardrobe makes, she believes that no man will like her…She believes that only in her body’s perfection can she be loved, and her diet focuses on five imaginary pounds that keep her from perfection. This weight anxiety is not negotiable. No convincing makes it otherwise, even from the most sincere of her lovers. Lisa’s idea of fun is going to bars and taunting college men by making them believe she is available. A good time is measured by the abandon she can muster; the more people who are crammed into a Mercedes heading to a party in the hills, the more valid the proof that she is having fun. At thirty-two, Lisa does not know about forty, and she is unprepared for the time when she will actually have to know something in order to have people listen to her. Her penalty is that the men she attracts with her current package see her only from a primitive part their brains, the childish part likes shiny objects that make noise when rattled. Older men looking for playthings and callow boys driven by hormones access these areas more easily than the clear-thinking wife seekers of their late twenties and early thirties. There is nothing too mysterious about Ray Porter, at least in the usual sense of the word. He is single he is kind, he tries to do the right thing, and he does not understand himself, or women, or his relationships with women. But there is one truth about him that can be said of a man who asks a woman to dinner before he has ever exchanged one personal word with her. Mr. Ray Porter is on the prowl. He does not know Mirabelle, he has only seen her. He has responded to something visceral, but that visceral thing is only in him, not between them. Not yet. He only imagines the character that unites her clohtehs, her skin, and her body. He has imagined the pleasure of touching her, and imagined her plasure at being touched. She is a feminine object that tweaks him at his animal best. He does not know his further intent with her, but he is not trying to get what he wants at any expense. If he thinks he would harm Mirabelle, he would back away. But he does not yet understand when and how people are hurt. He doesn’t understand the subtleties of slights and pains, that it is not the big events that hurt the most but rather the smallest questionable shift in tone at the end of a spoken word that can plow most deeply into the heart. They made love slowly, and afterward his hand wraps around her waist and holds her. And even though the gesture is somehow compromised by a lack of final and ultimate tenderness, Mirabelle's mind floats in space, and the five fingers that pull her toward him are received into her heart like a psalm. It is a comforting touch, a connection however tenuous, that makes her feel attached to something, someone, and less alone. Although he does not know it, Ray Porter f**** Mirabelle so he can be close to someone. He finds it difficult to hold her hand; he cannot stop in the street and spontaneously hug her, but his intercourse with her puts him in proximity to her. He presses his flesh against hers and his body mistakes her flesh for mind. Mirabelle, on the other hand, is laying down her life for him. Every time she gives herself to him, she sacrifices a bit of herself, she gives him a little more of her that he cannot return. Ray, not understanding that what he is taking from her is torn from her, believes that the arrangement is fair...Mirabelle is not sophisticated enough to understand what is happening to her, and Ray Porter is not sophisticated enough to know what he is doing to her. She is falling in love, and she fully expects her love to be returned once Mr. Porter comes to his senses. But right now, he is using the hours with her as portal to his own need for propinquity. At this point in his transition from boy to a man, he does not know the difference between a woman who is feasible and one who is not. This is still to come. Meanwhile, his eye roams around and focus his unconscious on what can be a woman's smallest desirable quanta. The back of her neck seen in the shadow of her hair. The arch of her foot resting in an open sandal...These glimpses propel his desire, yet because he won't admit to himself how small the thing is that he wants, he inflates it to include her entire self, so he won't think of himself as a bad guy. Then a courtship begins, unconscious lies are told, and an enormously complex schema is structured, all to attain the mystery of an ankle that enters seductively into an oversized jogging shoe. The conversation stumbles on, and Ray tells her he is sorry he hurt her. And he is, but inside he doesn't know what he could have done differently. He is determined not to love Mirabelle; she is not his peer. He knows that he is using her, but he isn't able to stop. And as powerful as their desire for each other remains, their conflicting goals stalemate them, and their relationship has failed to move forward, even the incremental amount necessary for it to stay alive. They mumble some good-byes, Ray knowing it is not yet over, and with Mirabelle unable to think further than her own current pain. He continues his quest elsewhere for a single appropriate love with occasional dates, road trips, and flirtations, but he continues to care about Mirabelle in a way he cannot explain. His love for her is not the crazy love he expects to feel, the swinging delirious rhapsody that he has promised himself. This love is of a different kind, and he searches his mind for its definition. Meanwhile, he maintains a belief that their relationship can go on undisturbed until the absolute right woman comes along, and he he will calmly explain their circumstance to Mirabelle and she will see clearly how well he has handled everything, and wish him well, and congratulate him on his reasonable thinking. There is no way the tranquil waters in which his brain floats so serenely can also calm two testicles of an unattached twenty-seven-year-old male.