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“Why,” I said, sipping his scotch, “are you here.”

“I’m here,” he said. He closed his eyes. “I’m here because”—he smiled—“because every so often I need.” His hands clenching and unclenching, “Every so often it becomes important,” his hands under the bathrobe, moving up my thighs, “to be someone …

I don’t remember him sitting down. The door opened onto a hallway that opened onto a lobby, if I’d been turning to look every time I heard footsteps I wouldn’t have been able to drink my martinis so quickly. Besides which I didn’t want to seem too desperate. I mean more desperate than I already app…

So I booked a room at a midlevel chain and I drove down to the city. The room was standard issue. Thin carpet in a dull dun color that already looked dirty. That always already looked dirty. You can take the girl out of the grad school but you can’t take the grad school out of the—Anyway the carp…

I didn’t want a baby. But that must be obvious, what I mean is I had never wanted one. I moved to Lincoln and I got married and my husband got another job and we moved and my husband got a third job, tenure track, and we moved again. I worked in HR. I came home from my job in HR and I cooked dinner…

John was on a health kick, had been, and to spite him I’d been buying frozen pepperoni pizzas, Confetti Cupcake Pop-Tarts, going out for groceries and coming home with buckets of KFC. These were, to be clear, for me. They were to spite him, but they were for me. He’d open a can of soup, Amy’s Organ…