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Later, by themselves, he brought it up. “I feel outrage. I feel anger. But I am undone by sadness. When I am behind the camera, I feel a desire to understand and empathize. To undercut my own points. The truth is, that’s when it becomes interesting.”

Mary nodded, but she didn’t really listen. Sh…

“You make us pity him.”

Bobby turned off the projector and flipped the lights back on. He shrugged.

“He looks haunted, pathetic, old,” Mary said.

“He is haunted, pathetic, old.”

“But he bears responsibility for atrocities, and he won’t admit it. He doesn’t even desire our sympathy. You …

She knew she should change her life. She felt herself to be in such a diminished, subtracted state. It even occurred to her that it might be the name itself—Louise Barrot. She believed taking the name of a dead infant had colored all her possibilities, tinted everything with morbidity. She knew als…

Would it be better to be honest? He used to try, quite often, to get her to come. He was not bad at it. He would slip down beneath the sheets and stay there until it was done. He seemed to enjoy himself—perhaps feigning for the same reasons she did, perhaps not. She didn’t fake orgasms. No reason t…

IT WASN’T THAT she no longer loved Augie. She felt increasing affection for him. It wasn’t that she found him repellent in any way. Objectively she would watch him from across the room when he went to get another beer from the bar. He was pleasing in a gentle-bear way. Nice muscles covered by an ea…