Cats (Motif)
Cats serve as a recurring motif throughout the story, exemplifying how Robert and Margot don't actually know that much about one another. Their relationship (if it can be called that) is founded on a series of shared inside jokes based on the banal, surface-level details of their lives that they have disclosed to one another: Red Vines, for example, or their cats. When Margot goes home for winter break, she and Robert begin jokingly calling each other by their cats' names, creating a meme between them that they lean on to express affection rather than discussing any more intimate or sensitive details of their lives. In the absence of much true, genuine knowledge about one another, they rely on jokes like these to keep their banter going.
The Fake ID (Symbol)
After they go on a date at the movies, Margot and Robert try to go out for drinks, but Margot's fake ID is rejected at the bar. This is because she's only 20, one year below the legal drinking age. Robert doesn't seem to know this, exactly—he realizes she's a sophomore in college, but has done some mental gymnastics in order to maintain the assumption that she must be older. This goes to show that neither is fully aware of the extent of their age gap. Margot is embarrassed when she can't get into the bar, and her rejected fake ID acts a symbol for these feelings of humiliation.
Red Vines (Motif)
Red Vines are another recurring joke throughout Margot and Robert's relationship. When Robert first meets Margot, she's working at the movie theater's concession stand, and she makes fun of him for ordering Red Vines, which are not a popular choice. He comes back and orders Red Vines again the next week, when he also asks for Margot's phone number. Later, when he first takes her out on a "date" to the 7-Eleven, he coaxes her out of the house on the pretense that he is going to buy her a pack of Red Vines. Finally, on their movie date at the multiplex, he makes a joke about Red Vines, which falls flat to both Margot and the person working at the concession stand. The repetition of jokes about Red Vines underscores that Margot and Robert haven't talked a lot about their personal lives, and that their flirty banter is centered instead on a handful of superficial jokes based on the limited details they do know about one another.
The Artsy Movie Theater (Symbol)
Margot works at an art-house cinema, which leads Robert to believe that she's sophisticated and possibly even a bit of a film snob. This is evident when he chooses to take her to a serious Holocaust movie, instead of a silly rom-com, on their movie date. He is clearly trying to impress her, because he has interpreted her job as evidence of her cultural erudition. Robert is also apparently a little offended when Margot suggests that they see the movie at the multiplex, even though it's playing at the theater where Margot works. He interprets this as a sign that she doesn't want to be seen with him at a theater where she might run into people she knows. When they get drinks after the movie and talk this through, it becomes clear that the artsy cinema has become a proxy for several of Robert's assumptions about Margot, symbolizing the type of person he thought she was, even if these assumptions proved to be unfounded.
The Cell Phone (Motif)
Robert and Margot's flirtation primarily grows via text-message exchange, especially while Margot is home for winter vacation. Throughout the break, she's glued to her phone, texting Robert with the intensity of someone having an extramarital affair. Later, after her catastrophic sexual encounter with Robert, Margot is haunted by her phone: Robert texts her repeatedly, and while she can escape his physical presence, she can't escape his messages. One can easily envision her phone screen lighting up dramatically in these moments, such as when she sits with Tamara, "the glow of the phone like a campfire illuminating their faces" (23), while Robert's increasingly angry final messages roll in. Altogether, the repeated emphasis on texting and phone communication demonstrates how Robert and Margot's intimacy has always been mediated: they're comfortable bantering over text, but their in-person interactions are invariably awkward.
