Cleopatra and Frankenstein

A few months later, Cleo (age 25) and Frank (in his mid-forties) get married at City Hall. They ask the hot dog vendor outside, Kamal, to be their witness. Frank’s friend Santiago throws them a party afterwards. The party is a small gathering of friends, the only family present being Frank’s young half sister Zoe. Cleo worries that Zoe doesn’t like her. Frank’s best friend Anders is present. Cleo and Anders had a one-night stand shortly after she met Frank but before they became serious; Frank doesn’t know about their hooking up.

Everyone at the party knows that Cleo and Frank are together but are getting married so Cleo can get a Green Card and stay in the US. Her best friend Quentin is wealthy and gay and would have married Cleo if she needed the Green Card—but Cleo insists that she is truly in love with Frank. Santiago sets off some fireworks to celebrate the marriage.

Quentin and his boyfriend Johnny break up. In their final fight, Johnny accuses Quentin of being too obsessed with Cleo. Cleo comforts Quentin after the breakup, but Quentin is annoyed when Cleo invites Frank to join them. Quentin believes that he and Cleo are real soulmates. Even though Frank is cool and has money, he doesn’t see Frank and Cleo lasting forever.

Frank and Cleo are still with Quentin when, later, Johnny comes back, drunk, calling Quentin a “trans freak.” In the days after the breakup, Quentin can’t rely on Cleo spending a lot of time with him because she’s newly married. Quentin comforts himself by exploring on his own, specifically safe-sex gay orgy parties.

Quentin meets an adventurous and mysterious Russian man named Alex, whom he goes out with. Quentin reflects that Cleo would no longer go on these adventures with Quentin because “[h]er marriage had given her access to a world he would never know. She would not admit it, perhaps would never consciously know it, but she had left him behind. She had become acceptable” (51). Alex and Quentin take drugs together and have sex.

Frank runs his own advertising agency. He’s stressed about an unsatisfied client when his sister calls him from the hospital. Zoe has long struggled with epilepsy and has had a seizure during rehearsals for Antigone. Frank is hungover from his night out with Anders, but he rushes to the hospital, calling Cleo on the way. Frank and Zoe have different fathers and a considerable age gap between them, but he’s always been eager to take care of her.

At the hospital, Zoe is disappointed to hear that Cleo is joining them. Frank wishes Zoe and Cleo could be like sisters, especially because they’re so similar and are closer in age. Cleo is kind to Zoe, but Zoe is cold toward her.

Zoe joins her roommate Tali at a yoga studio for a “Climaxing to Consciousness” workshop (73). Zoe is stressed out because she has been working at an upscale women’s boutique that doesn’t pay enough for her to pay off her medical bill from her latest seizure. Frank cut her off from his own funds after his wedding, and she doesn’t want to bother her parents with the news of her seizure. The workshop is free and therefore the only entertainment she can afford on a Friday night.

At the workshop, the instructor talks them through meditative exercises to access sexual experiences from the past. Zoe can’t help but recall her first time having sex when she was 15 with a boy she really liked, but whom she had her first seizure in front of, likely scaring him off because he never had sex with her again. At the workshop, she meets a woman named Portia who is a professional escort and makes so much money that she’s already paid off her student loans.

Despite her adamance that she won’t spend money, Zoe goes to a bar to join her friends. The doorman flirts with her and lets her in even though it’s clear she’s using a fake ID. She doesn’t find her friends, but she runs into Cleo and her friend Audrey. Cleo and Audrey want Zoe to stay with them and hang out, but Zoe leaves. The doorman follows Zoe lewdly and corners her in an empty street. Cleo and Audrey catch up with her before the doorman can do anything else. They insist that Zoe go dancing with them.

Zoe joins them and is surprised to find herself confiding in them, as she doesn’t have a lot of girlfriends and isn’t always sure how to connect with women. Zoe tells them that she thinks women don’t like her. The women discuss how difficult it can be to connect with girls who are easily envious. Audrey tells them that she’s slept with Frank’s friend Anders, but Zoe doesn’t share that Anders once kissed her. Cleo admits that she often feels lonely, even with Frank. Zoe apologizes to Cleo for not being kinder to her. They all go back to Cleo and Frank’s place and fall asleep in Frank’s bed.

Cleo’s father and stepmother, Peter and Miriam, are in town. Frank joins Cleo to meet with them, but she hasn’t told her father that she and Frank are married, just that they’re living together. The lunch is immediately awkward. Miriam does most of the talking, bragging about her inner child psychology workshops that she conducts all over the world. Peter and Cleo rehash the past when Cleo discovers that he and Miriam have been in New York for a few days without Cleo knowing. Cleo points out that Peter and Miriam hadn’t invited her to their wedding, and reveals that she and Frank got married without Peter and Miriam too. Miriam brings up Cleo’s emotional state as indicative of the pain or inheritance of her mother’s depression; Miriam’s mother died by suicide when Cleo was in college. Cleo and Frank storm off.

Cleo and Frank travel to the south of France for a belated honeymoon. Ever since the lunch with Cleo’s father, Cleo has felt her depression returning, but she doesn’t want to go back on her antidepressants. Frank avoids talking about Cleo’s mother’s death by suicide and notices that Cleo has become more withdrawn. The honeymoon is part of his attempt to cheer her up.

At their luxury hotel, they meet an older American man who takes a liking to Cleo. The three have dinner together, with Frank and the American man growing increasingly competitive. The man challenges Frank to dive off his second-floor balcony into the swimming pool. Frank gets drunk and plays along with the bet, and Cleo goes off on her own. She’s approached by a group of teenagers hanging around the hotel, who invite her to go dancing in town with them. Cleo goes with them but gets sick and uncomfortable and heads back to the hotel on her own. The bar is farther from the hotel than she thought, and Cleo gets frightened by her walk back. Frank takes a taxi to go look for her and finds her. That night, in bed, Cleo asks Frank why he took the drunken bet for the dangerous dive. He tells her it's all about the story.