Sometimes she disliked the sight of his feet, or the glint of his glasses when the light hit them at a particular angle, or the sensation of hearing him use a word that she didn’t know the meaning of. But then she’d smell his soft Jesse smell, or he’d read something to her about some South African riot, or she’d watch him bent over his typewriter making a correction, and she’d think, “He’s mine. I own him.” Or, in a healthier vein, she’d feel a sense of belonging, a corny feeling that embarrassed and thrilled her. She felt like a What’s Wrong with This Picture? element in a Norman Rockwell painting.

She wasn’t sure exactly when he’d started calling her Gail, but it was pretty soon after he’d moved in. She called him lots of things, ranging from Joseph to Sir. It was their understanding that she called him so many names because he was so many things to her.

Sometimes she would go to him to discuss the notion of happiness. “Remember in Ethan Frome,” she said earnestly, “where they’re sledding in the moonlight? Where they’re wailing with laughter in the glistening snow? That’s what I think happiness is.” She stared at the floor in front of her.

Jesse removed his glasses and wiped his eyes. “More than anything,” he said, “it’s probably just the absence of pain or anxiety.” He squinted across the desk at Suzanne. “What does Lucy say? Did you ask her?”

“She said it’s a penis the size of a wastebasket, which hardly covers absence of pain, unless you like cystitis.”

“Which apparently she does,” Jesse said. “So, Lowell has a penis the size of a wastebasket.”

“How did we get on this subject?”

“Happiness,” he said, his glasses once again on and his hands folded in front of him. “Have you eaten today?”

“I think so,” she said vaguely.

“You’d be happier if you ate, don’t you think?” he asked.

“Maybe.”

“Want me to fix you a peanut butter sandwich?”

Suzanne smiled. Maybe she was just hungry.

One morning, while driving to the gym, she suddenly panicked. “I’m going to die,” she thought. “I’m going to be killed in a car crash.” Her hands gripped the wheel and she slowed to the speed limit.

Suzanne was convinced that now that something nice and regular was happening to her, she was going to die. Whereas she used to hasten her death through substance abuse, she now feared for her life because she had reason to live it. She had felt the hot breath of irony on the back of her neck for years. Now she was breathing irony, filling her lungs with invisible irony, its buoyant dread charging the atmosphere, moving in like a cold front.