August kept a clean apartment. He owned a nice stereo and a new, large TV. He didn’t seem to care one way or another about who was president. He wanted her around all the time. She settled into cooking for him and the daily repetitions of an ordinary life. Laundry. Cleaning. Shopping. Why shouldn’t she enjoy being taken care of a little? The character of those first years as Louise was a swift and steady decrease in possibilities. But wasn’t that true of everyone? As time went by, wasn’t every life a kind of narrowing, a steady relinquishing of possibilities?