“How’d you get so smart?” he said, partly to cover the fact that her analysis, which was so generous, was hitting him surprisingly hard, but partly because he didn’t want to talk about himself anymore. He vastly preferred talking about her. “And since you’re so smart, you should be able to find one man in all of New York with whom to have sex.”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” Apparently, he wasn’t the only one who wanted to change the subject. “The divorce, though, I am finally making progress on. The new papers are all done, and Vince has them—or at least Vince’s lawyer has them. Honestly, it’s such a relief that everything happens through lawyers now.”

“And do those papers include you giving him your dog?”

“They do not. My lawyer suggested I offer him my notes on the Gertrude Stein part of the book we never finished in exchange for Max Minimus.”

“Really?” Max did not like the sound of that. “All that work?”

“Well, it stings, but she said that’s the point. He wants to hurt me.”

But he did hurt you, Max wanted to say. Why does he have to keep doing it?

“He’s likely to view it as a bigger concession than the dog, which to my mind it’s not. I’m never going to do anything with those notes. The project is all tied up with him in my mind, and anyway—” She cut herself off.

“Anyway what?”

“I have an idea for a new project that is tangentially related. I won’t need the notes for it, but it will broadly arise from all that thinking.”

“Tell me more.”

“No.” He made a noise like she’d wounded him, and she laughed. “I don’t even have it straight in my head yet. That’s this fall’s project.”

“Ah.” She had that semester of teaching leave coming up. “Tell me,” he persisted. “I’ll help you get it straight in your head.”

“No,” she said again. “Eyes on the prize here, dude—the prize being a divorce. If we can make Vince view this as a win for him, it might finally do the trick.”

What an absolute jackass Vince was. Mean but also insecure and petty. Max wanted to hop the next plane to Spain and throttle him. He forced himself to sound calm. “That’s grand. Sounds like progress.”

“It is, but why does progress always have to be so painful? Get this: the lawyer wants me to be seen in public being civil and friendly in Vince’s presence in case he doesn’t accept the new terms. She says we need to do what we can to protect me later if he refuses to agree and forces a trial. That means acting in ways that counter the narrative he is likely to advance about me.”

“Which is?”