[...] I was on my period, information I provided as a courtesy, and he said, breathily, that he didn’t care, as if that would make him seem especially sensually in thrall about the female body and not like every man I’d ever slept with before. That I could see through things like this, things that many men, mostly unbeknownst to each other, do, made me think I might understand him, that I might have the upper hand. And since he’d performed so well over the course of the night, withholding at some moments to suggest he might not be as interested as I suspected he was, showing off at some moments to demonstrate that he possessed all the good qualities (smarts, worldliness, humor, etc.), I caught myself tallying the score, wondering which of us was going to come away the more eager and therefore less attractive, forgetting I suppose that we lived in different countries and that truly smart, worldly, funny people have one-night stands in foreign cities without imagining who would “win” in their hypothetical relationship.[...]