I returned to the Yacht Club several mornings in a row after I finished working, but I was not able to keep up with Cap, who was always bright-­eyed and well rested. My jaw hurt continually from keeping such a drasti­cally tight rein on myself. I was not pleasant company. After about a week, my anxieties got the better of me, and I began going straight home. I never merely arrived home from work; I felt as though I barely escaped with my life every day. When the door at the top of the stairs was bolted, I was almost safe. When the door at the bottom of the stairs was bolted, I heaved a sigh of relief. I could relax.

Home. My apartment was my refuge. It was comfortable and mine. It had its own peculiar scent: basement, bordering on damp. The odor was pleas­ant, it was distinctive, it was familiar; it smelled like home. The apartment had my personality, all furnishings I had made or scrounged or bought. Lighting was kept low, soft and soothing. I could be myself within those cool walls; I needed no pretenses. I came to view it almost as a friend, a protector, a companion.

The first thing I did when I got home was think about Sarah. I would feel the scant meat on my arms and think about her, round, muscular, healthy, glow­ing. I would set my jaw again and vow to behave the way I needed to behave to get on a straight course to a lifestyle as healthy as Sarah’s.

I thought at times that I was on the verge of a breakdown, that my personality might be unstable enough to crack. The thought was vague but ever-­present, lurking in the back of my mind. I felt at all times I was under tremendous pressure. I had no idea what the pressure was from, nor what I was to do about it, nor did I closely examine the feeling. The possibility of going completely berserk had always been with me—indeed, I knew I had occasionally been insane—and the possibility increased in my mind when I had bizarre flashes that related to nothing in my experience.

I would be eating breakfast, for example, and wondering if Mary Lou ever finished her college degree after she divorced Al, and I would have warm feelings toward her, and then realize that I knew no Mary Lou; I knew no Al. These, to me, seemed like symptoms of a breakdown. I had no idea what a breakdown meant or what I might do should that happen. I wasn’t sure I would recognize one if I had it, but I did know that I could at least do it in privacy, if not safety, if it happened at home. As a result, I rushed home after work and never invited guests.

And then She began to woo me.