Betty Schaefer: Where have you been keeping yourself? I've got the most wonderful news for you.Joe Gillis: I haven't been keeping myself at all, lately.
Come think of it, the whole place seemed to have been stricken with the kind of creeping paralysis... out of beat with the rest of the world... crumbling apart in slow motion. There was a tennis court... or rather the ghost of a tennis court... with faded markings and a sagging net... And of course she had a pool. Who didn't then? Mabel Norman and John Gilbert must have swum in it ten thousand midnights ago... It was empty now. Or was it?
I'll do it again. I'll do it again! I'll do it again...
She'd sit very close to me and she'd smell of tuberoses - which is not my favorite perfume. Not by a long shot. Sometimes as we'd watch, she'd clutch my arm or my hand, forgetting she was my employer. Just becoming a fan. Excited about that actress up there on the screen. I guess I don't have to tell you who the star was. They were always her pictures. That's all she wanted to see.