Mary's Tipsy Talk With Joe, Explained：the world's your oyster

What's really going on

The scene is Mary's real self-portrait, and the alcohol is the door that opens. She is generous with Joe — telling him to live while he can, that he is young and free — and the advice is exactly what she cannot do herself. Her talk of the car as a life-changing purchase, and of naming her body parts, keeps the mood light, but the jokes are doing the work of avoiding the subject. When she says she is 'a glass-half-full kind of girl' and then explains why older men reject her once they realize she is not as young as they thought, the optimism and the hurt sit side by side. 'It's never too late, Mary,' Joe offers, and the kindness of the line is also its tragedy: she has heard it before, and the evening keeps ending in the same place.

Theme

このチャプターで学べること

• Oyster talk turns loneliness into style
• Can't complain politely closes a question
• Click with someone means instant ease
• Fit the bill means you are what they want

発音のポイント

• world's your — Run world's and your together; they sound like one word.
• sort of — Sort of reduces to sorta, with of almost silent.
• at the moment — The the in at the moment nearly disappears; the beat falls on mo.