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“I understand,” he said, “that someone of your talent and intelligence would want to find a more proactive solution for our nothing problem. And what I’m saying is . . . Please help me. Help me do that. I can’t just pack up and go find something to believe in. I’m sorry, but I can’t. Maybe you can,…

“You think a death threat’s irrelevant?”

“I was talking about your trash-can bullshit,” she said. “You think you’re the only one getting death threats?” She stopped spinning and stared at the screen for a second before typing something in, then spinning again.

Miles stewed. He hadn’t meant to…

“I am,” he said. “You’re saying how quickly the winds can change. I’d better watch my step.”

“No,” she said. “I’m saying, I’d like to love you.”

“But?” he said.

“But you’re making it hard,” she said.

Miles felt his skin sloughing off. His bones had quit too. He’d be nothing but a mess o…

When she did speak, Miles’s wife was careful. She was attentive to what she said, how she said it, and why, making her pauses more loaded, her half of the conversation more compelling, and her criticisms more devastating. Miles was messy by comparison, but he preferred to think of it as a strategy.…

“How could you not know?” she said.

He shrugged.

“Fuck that,” she said. “Tell me.”

In truth, he’d wanted to talk it through with her since the problem first came to his attention. His wife was an expert at coring the layers of Miles’s anxiety for nuggets of relevant truth. She saw him fast…