"In her room, at her mirror, she finds that each familiar action has changed slightly, has slipped sideways into a new light, a new meaning. This will be the first time that she goes to work and leaves a man waiting for her at home – a man whom she wants to come home to – and though she finds herself very attached to him, she is looking forward to this time alone with her regular life, this somewhat defiant break. It’s getting hard to watch him, and she could stand a dose of pain on her own terms – the addict’s thrill of the self-administered injection, sometimes performed just for the sensory sting, long after the heroin has run out."

— John O’Brien, Leaving Las Vegas

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