“Is it that obvious?” Jen said. “It was kind of our courtship review.”

“Only to someone sensitive,” the old woman said, smiling ironically. “Like me.”

After the interview, Jen was sorry to find that none of her friends had even listened to the broadcast. They had all been either asleep or at work. Her mom had been out of town; her dad couldn’t find the station. David, it turned out, was the only one who had tuned in, and she felt slightly guilty for having thought of him disparagingly when she said, in response to a question about form and materials, that you can’t touch a word.

As the weather changed, and the rains began, Jen realized she needed someplace to put the art equipment that over the summer had migrated into the open space between her house and studio. The patio was littered with wooden frames and sawhorses, not to mention the garden tools and outdoor furniture. And so one weekend she asked David to help her build an awning off the roof of her studio building. It was a simple enough project—just affixing long sheets of corrugated plastic to sloping beams extending from the eaves, and thus creating a dry storage space underneath.

Late in the morning, David showed up in his regular clothes and stood around waiting for orders. Jen, busily measuring out a four-by-four with a stub of a pencil from her toolbelt, didn’t notice him at first. He tried kissing her but she backed away, too deep in her project to entertain any distractions.

“So what should I do?” he asked.

“You want to start hammering in the stuff up there?” she said. She pointed at the roof.

“OK,” he said. “How should I get up there?”

Jen found him a ladder and watched as he tried to open it near the studio wall, planting his feet and bending his shoulders awkwardly. Eventually he climbed up to the roof and gamely started amassing his materials, his nails and a hammer and the plastic sheeting. He worked steadily, if inefficiently, but at no point seemed to take real possession of the labor.

Jen watched David struggle to control the objects around him that day. He looked stranded and helpless in his body, like it was burdensome somehow. Or maybe he was like a fastidious little prince, confronted for the first time by life outside the palace walls. He hammered at strange angles, contorting his long arms and rarely connecting with the nail. He lifted boards so that they dragged and wobbled against his effort. He was frightened to stride across the lattice of beams and instead crossed it by sitting down and scooting on his butt. Moreover, he seemed proud of his incompetence and complained about his deficiencies in a way that was more like bragging. He seemed to think his insufficiencies were charming.

When Jen learned that his parents still paid his car insurance for him, a certain mystery slipped away.