“I’ve known Palmer since I was in first grade and he was in fourth. Do you think I’d share a house with a guy I was sexually attracted to?”

“I won’t take that personally.”

Glenna laughed. “C’mon, Gordo.”

I doubted that she was screwing Biff. Something about him was almost asexual, and he never brought women or men to the house to sleep over. Yet, he lingered in the kitchen after dinner to talk with Glenna, standing beside her at the sink with their hands submerged in the soapy dishwater. He handed off his old oxford-cloth shirts to her, and she wore them around the house with the white sweatpants he’d given her from the Sun Isle Polo and Country Club, where every December he competed in the club’s amateur polo tournament.

“Nice sweats,” I said. “Could Biff get me a pair?”

“Gordon, don’t be so possessive.”

“I’m not possessive. I really want a cool pair of white sweatpants.”

“Stop it. You have no right to tell me who I can be friends with.”

“What are my rights?”

“You can stay or you can leave,” she said.

“The essence of democracy. Choice.”

Whether we argued about Biff or her grind at the hospital, I had the feeling that our real conflict was about something else entirely, but Glenna wasn’t ready to tell me about it—at least not while I was awake.

Instead, in the evenings she would grow distant, and even though we were in bed reading, we might as well have been on opposite sides of the planet. When she grew tired, she would click off her light without a word and turn away from me, and I would move toward my edge of the mattress and curl up alone.

Later on, in the middle of the night, Glenna would wake and spoon herself around me. Through the curtain of my own slumber I would feel her trembling and hear a faint sob. She would press her hand against my shoulder until I turned toward her, and she could come into my arms, and I would dimly perceive that she was entwining her body with mine, huddling into me as if seeking shelter, whispering, “I don’t want to lose you.”

I was stunned that Glenna was scared of losing me, for I had thought it was the other way around, and though I was too clouded with sleep to answer, I held her tighter, drawing her close enough so that in my mind we became a single sculpture of flesh and bone, impossible to separate.

Yet, in the morning, after the clock radio went off, and Glenna put on her terry-cloth robe and went downstairs to shower and then came back up to dress for the hospital, and I lay in bed watching her brush her hair, she would look over at me, her eyes holding mine, but never mention the fear that had disturbed her sleep or the affection that had helped her sleep again.

I wondered if she thought it had all been a dream, not her life at all, or mine for that matter, only a silent storm that would pass if she let it, if she answered it with a silence of her own.