Elbow Room

Says Paul Varjack, “You know what's wrong with you, Miss Whoever-you-are? You're chicken, you've got no guts. You're afraid to stick out your chin and say, "Okay, life's a fact…”

She stops dead in her tracks. It’s as if he is addressing her and not Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Like Holly, she has been running too. Running ceaselessly, running fretfully from something she is afraid to acknowledge. Running from that which threatens to change her world irreplaceably, irretrievably. As if ballroom dancing, swirling from one arm to another and hoping the music will never stop. City after city, people after people, distraction after distraction; like downing drinks after drinks, those that make everything forgetful, blurry-- hoping she'd never be sober enough to see what the real picture looks like. It’s ultimately useless, as Varjack says, because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.

In her dreams she sees the face of a monster, so close to her she can feel its breath on her face. Her eyes are shut and she knows from somewhere deep within that to be free she must open them and look it straight in the eye. But she cannot bring herself to do it and therefore must remain enslaved till that time to this phantasm of fear. And keep running.

Her state is what Richard Coe described as--

A freedom of a slave to crawl east along the deck of a boat going west.