The Pain Room was designed to be viewed by one person at a time. Viewers had to open the short door, crawl inside the little room, lock themselves in, and sit in a chair to view a six- minute film, a compilation of vile images and scenes—torture, decay, violence, death. If the viewer flinched or looked away, a brief electric shock was sent through the chair. If four shocks were administered, the film ended and the door popped open—the viewer had failed. If the viewer endured the film to completion, a trapdoor opened beneath the chair and sent them down a slide, delivering them to a hidden party—a circus of half-clothed dancers and actors paid to fawn over anyone who came down the chute, to ply them with whatever alcohol or drugs or attention they wanted. Potential viewers had to sign a nondisclosure agreement and waiver just to join the queue, though many who lined up never made it into The Pain Room and even fewer made it down the chute. By the end of the run, the secret was out; club kids lined up around the block and nearly rioted when the gallery closed at two in the morning.

It would not be unreasonable to say that X and I, in that moment, did not yet know each other except by instinct. We hadn’t yet cohabitated, had endured no hardships, hadn’t traveled together, and had only discussed personal matters in the most cursory ways. Despite this, I felt X knew me better than anyone else, and the moment she called me ruthless I believed myself to be so. Prior to that moment, I may have identified as a rather meek person, a fearful person, someone who was terrified of pain, of difficulty and conflict. But here she was—this enormously powerful woman telling me that I possessed a rare strain of power. I accepted it completely. I immediately became a new creature, one who could accept—without worry or hesitation—that the most important person in her life would disappear for weeks at a time without explanation or assurance of her return.

At the same time, I still carried around those fearful past selves, and the ghost of Henry’s wife still paced in the back of my mind, as did my parents’ silent and nameless daughter, as well as the young woman who once desired the most conventional, stable life possible—a nice living room, a face no one would call ugly, a marriage, the approval of others. In that first year or so with X, I was sometimes haunted by their voices and the worries of those past selves, especially when X was gone.

When I later asked her why she bought the paintings if she didn’t think they were so great, X told me they were her reminder that meaningful work isn’t always “good work” and a challenge to make things that were both good and meaningful. The paintings were also, though my wife was loath to utter such words, an investment.

By the time I contacted Marion for an interview in 2003, I’d been a widow for long enough that I no longer feared meeting this first wife, though I cannot say I was looking forward to it. I will admit I was intimidated by Marion’s effortless grace—who wouldn’t be? She is a good deal younger than I am, not so much in years but in the way she carries them, and not only in the way she carries them physically but also in her bright and undiminished gaze, that of someone who seems to know no disappointment. You could argue, of course, that physical beauty indicates nothing of any depth about a person, yet few can avoid falling under its spell.

“She wasn’t afraid to be hostile … and that was something I was very interested in at the time. Unfortunately, I’ve always been one of those people who wants to be liked, one of the most terrible weaknesses a person can have, but what can you do? Of course, everyone’s virtues come with equal and opposite vices, so I was rebelling, I suppose, trying to go against my own nature. And X didn’t care what anyone thought of her! No one at all. She didn’t wait around on anyone’s approval.”

“Whose thigh is being stabbed here?” the host asks.

“This one,” X said, pointing to one of the drawings.

“What I mean is—metaphorically. What is the metaphor of the thigh?”

“It’s not a metaphor,” X says, almost whispering, staring at the floor. “It’s a part of a leg.”†

In late 1985, she spent a month alone in a cabin in rural Vermont, then two weeks in Japan, though she took no photographs, and only a few notes, and brought nothing home with her. The only postcard she seems to have sent from Tokyo was back to herself: “I can’t understand why I made this trip, except in the hope that there is something good in being so unhappy—as if I might use up my large portion of unhappiness + have only joy left.”†

When I moved into X’s loft in June 1989 it had seemed empty in a robbed way—bare nails on the wall, hardly any furniture—though I didn’t ask why. We spent nearly all our time at home, especially that first summer when heat waves made the city hellish. When we ventured out at night, everything seemed to be under her spell—private admission to empty museums, restaurants entered through hidden doors, taxis appearing when needed as if by her will. At home again she would read to me as I took a bath. She played the piano and sang. Many nights a week she rolled out a projector and screened films for us—classics I’d never seen, French New Wave, Italian romances, Hitchcock, and sometimes new ones—reels that arrived in big crates from studios or directors. She once mentioned that she’d worked as a projectionist long ago, but when I asked where or when, she didn’t say. She often left such questions answered; I never repeated myself.

Of course, it isn’t my business, Olivia continued, and it was never my business, and anyway it doesn’t matter what she did to me—it’s so far in the past now, and I always believed she, of all people, she always had the capability to change. It was what attracted me in the first place, you know, how mutable she was, how she might become someone else right in front of you.

Shelley, in her flowery, uncertain voice, began to explain herself. I looked at her wavy blond hair, linen skirt, and pink tank top. It must be a kind of suicide to love a person like this, a person so edgeless. It must be like drowning. Shelley explained to me how they met, how close they were, how immediate that closeness was. She told me the places they went and the things they did, but her affair—like all such affairs—was simply boring; she was stupid enough to believe she is the only person who has ever known such a thing, as if she alone had discovered the intensity of deceptive love. I considered telling her.