The only way he had survived in his marriage, with a wife who not only made about fifteen times his really quite good doctor salary but who, the moment she surpassed him on the earn-o-meter, found herself completely disgusted by his earning ability, was that he made a big show of only barely tolerating the perks of the money. He allowed Rachel to buy the Hamptons house, he allowed her to buy the monstrous new-money/fake-old-money apartment at the Golden, he allowed her to buy the convertible. He never allowed himself to realize that Rachel’s things had become his things, even as he partook in their thingness. He didn’t buy them, but they were also his. And now he hated mediation because it felt like wanting any of it, claiming any right to it, would have been admitting that he derived pleasure from it, too. Fine, he said with every tiny acquiescence. Take it all, take it all.