when I glimpsed her in person at last, I was dis-disillusioned. It wasn’t that I had been wrong, exactly: she did look malnourished and possibly tubercular. But what she lacked in anatomical perfection she made up for in physical charisma, of the sort that athletes and dancers and other vitally corporeal types emanate as they move. She swept into the party in a jangle of jewelry and a blur of amorphous fabric, her fingers clanking with rings. Space crackled around her. Lesser people dutifully assembled, like royal subjects, to listen to her pontificate about something inane in her smoky, mellifluous voice. She smelled herbal, but glamorously so, and I was mesmerized by the way she gestured, with sharp staccato movements, as if she were conducting a jerky symphony. Years later, when I watched footage of Elizabeth Holmes, I could not shake the sensation that they were somehow twinned, even though they looked nothing alike—the one blonde and hulking, the other gangly and brunette. Both were compelling in a specifically aesthetic way, but neither was even attractive.

superficial charm

For psychopaths, it tends to be switched off by default. But they're actually really good at mimicking a normal brain if and when they need to.