She was wearing a wide-necked brown sweaterdress and thick gray socks. Seeing her as she was at home, not in one of her smart Sunday outfits, not in her Tuesday-circle tomboy attire, he had an unsettling strong hit of her reality—her independence as a woman, her thinking of thoughts and making of choices wholly unrelated to him. To glimpse how it must feel to be her, inhabiting her own life, round the clock, was exciting but also daunting. On the counter by the kitchen stove, she’d already set out an ashtray and a crudely fashioned marijuana cigarette.