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Structural Incompatibility: A powerful twice-divorced male will be unable to acknowledge, much less sanction, the ambitions of a much younger female mate. By definition, their relationship will be temporary.

Structural Desire: The much younger temporary female mate of a powerful male will be…

People will try to change you, Rhea, Lou goes. Don’t let ’em.

But I want to change.

No, he goes, serious. You’re beautiful. Stay like this.

But the freckles, I go, and my throat gets that ache.

The freckles are the best part, Lou says. Some guy is going to go apeshit for those freckles.…

I notice Marty looking over at me kind of hesitant, and I see how this is supposed to work: I’m the dog, so I get Marty. I slide open a glass door and go onto Lou’s balcony. I’ve never seen San Francisco from so high up: it’s a soft blue-black, with colored lights and fog like gray smoke. Long pier…

There was a pause. Yellow light scissored through the leaves. Bennie lifted his gaze from Sasha’s breasts to her face. She had high cheekbones and narrow green eyes, wavy hair that ranged from reddish to purplish, depending on the month. Today it was red. She was smiling at Chris, but Bennie detect…

“Please,” she told Coz. “Don’t ask me how I feel.”

“All right,” he said quietly.

They sat in silence, the longest silence that ever had passed between them. Sasha looked at the windowpane, rinsed continually with rain, smearing lights in the falling dark. She lay with her body tensed, claimin…