Though older than Juliana by six or seven years, Gordon was an anxious lover, inexperienced, grateful (it seemed) that she didn’t ever suggest that she was less inexperienced than he, that she expected anything of him or by him other than what he did, or tried to do; she anticipated nothing beyond what was.

Essentially she was untouched, uninvolved. Lying with the panting man in her arms, so grateful for her, the most mild of kisses, the gentlest of murmurs, of the sort one might make to a child to placate him—Yes. I love you, too.

Though Gordon and Juliana had known each other only a few months, Gordon soon began to press for an engagement. He needed the steadying of a permanent relationship, he said. Juliana was touched, and slightly embarrassed, that any man should speak to her so candidly, acknowledging his weakness.

Gordon was distracted, beset by worries having to do with his academic work and his relations with his father, as by gnats fluttering about his head. Juliana had never met anyone so obsessed with family and family history. His litany of worries, resentments. His hopes, plans. His jealousy of an older brother. His preoccupation with grades. (Unlike Juliana, Gordon could not bear any grade lower than A minus. And even an A minus, he confessed, made him feel as if he was slipping down a rock face, desperately grasping at the rock with his fingertips, tearing his nails.) His anxiety about the future had much to do with the fact that after he graduated, he would be working with his father in the Kechel family business, subordinate to his brother.

“But why?”—Juliana asked.

“Why—what?”

“Why should you work with your father? And why would you want to be ‘subordinate’ to your brother? You don’t get along with your brother.”

“Because—that’s how it is.”

“How what is?”

“How—how my life—the business … How it is.”

Juliana was touched, if mystified, by the rich man’s son, so dependent upon his father’s opinion of him. Often entire evenings of their lives were devoted to Gordon compulsively repeating his father’s remarks, and Gordon’s replies, whether from telephone conversations or from emails; always Gordon was anxious to know how Juliana interpreted certain remarks, indecipherable to Gordon.

Juliana perceived early on that Gordon’s father was a cruel master, manipulating both his sons into rivalries that fed his ego, but Juliana was too shrewd to tell Gordon anything like this. Instead she said, “It’s very clear, your father is impressed with you. He trusts you. That’s why he seems to be critical sometimes—he wants to motivate you.”

“Is that it! I see.”

And Gordon really did see, once Juliana pointed out to him a possibility that was not exactly a probability but that strengthened his dependence upon her as well as upon the father.

Lazily Juliana thought—If I try, I can become the wife of a rich man.

Smiling to herself—But do I care enough? Is it worth it?