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[...] Is this how it feels, he thinks, to get what you want? To desire, and at the same time to have, still desiring, but fulfilled. It was beautiful, thank you. Ah, I feel really happy, he says. Or, I don’t know, that’s not even the right word. Her eyes are closed then. Me too, she murmurs. He’s n…

She looks up at him now, and he’s looking back at her, an intense silent look. She tries to laugh, and her laughter has a helpless sound. Margaret, he says, can I kiss you? She doesn’t know what to do, whether to laugh again, or start crying. Okay, she says. He comes over to where she’s standing ag…

I don’t know, he says. The one thing I said to myself in the car was, if she comes inside with you, don’t start talking to her about chess. It takes up too much of my life already, to be quite honest. Like to say the absolute truth, I spend too much time on it, because I’m not even that good. Altho…

Would you like to come inside? he asks.

Doubtingly, he goes on looking at her, as if to say he’s sorry to ask, and he waits for her to answer. There’s something so vulnerable in his look, in his tone of voice. Is there anything she can say to explain? About her job, and how much older she is, an…

[...] Most of the time she can go through life interacting pleasantly with the people around her, pleasantly and superficially, never thinking or wanting to think about the profound and so carefully concealed sexual personalities of others. But it is not possible all the time to be so unconscious o…