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That was a month ago, and it had inaugurated a period of Mark’s life that was bound to end badly. If meeting Celeste post-boyfriend was like arriving in Russia in March 1917, hopeful March after the tsar’s abdication, the appointment of the provisional government, the short-lived democratic process…

Recently, however, there’d been some kind of shift. Celeste, truth be told, wasn’t quite who Mark thought she was, from Syracuse; or rather he wasn’t quite who he thought he was. Too long a sacrifice, Mark sometimes said to himself, when he began to notice their problems, can make a stone of the …

Then—eighteen months ago—he moved to Brooklyn. Historical periods, according to Marx, produce both recognizable types and anti-types, and late capitalism, at around the time Mark was moving to Brooklyn, was producing its own antibodies, its antitheses, in the form of young women who thought that Ma…

“Do you want to be a couple?” she said.

“OK,” said Mark. He sort of mumbled it.

“You’re going to love me? And tell me you love me? And go on weekend trips to Skaneateles?”

Mark had often gone to Skaneateles with Sasha. Did Leslie know this? He rolled over and lay on his back, looking at th…

As Mark ate Celeste’s much more filling sandwich, he wondered that this attractive young woman could be interested in him. But then Sasha was also attractive. Mark just needed a pep talk. He considered the Mensheviks. They were wonderful people. Deeply schooled, thoughtful, chary, ironic, they told…