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“You know how a star is supposed to twinkle? We say twinkle because that is how it looks, but when a star feels itself, it’s not a twinkle, it’s more like a throb. Star throbs. Over and over and over. Like this. Stars just throb and throb and throb and sometimes, when they can’t throb anymore, when they can’t hold it anymore, they fall out of the sky.”

This quotation occurs at is the very end of Chapter Six, when Son and Jadine lie together after the horrible Christmas dinner. In response to her question of what he wants to “do to” her, he says he wants to help her imagine what it feels like to be a star. The description he gives of this experience, with its use of words like throb, is very sexual, and this quotation represents the first coming together of Son and Jadine as a couple. As Son speaks, he seems to refer less to stars and more toward the experience of a sexual climax or orgasm. But Son’s words also refer to the larger experience of the relationship between Son and Jadine.

Son’s description both implies that he and Jadine had sex for the first time that night and also foreshadows the future arc of their relationship. Crucial to Son’s account of the life of a star is the idea that life occurs in isolation and with great intensity. Those attributes characterize Son and Jadine’s relationship as it first develops in New York, where they are away from their families, living a very intense and physical existence. But, as Son notes, these high levels of intensity cannot be sustained. Eventually anything that “throbs” with great force and life will burn out. And, in fact, after reaching a peak of intensity in the city, their relationship deteriorates rapidly, and it seems to “fall” away. Son’s description proves dead on, even though he speaks these words before he and Jadine even sleep together.

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