Why did this happen? How did they see me? I inquired of Alicia. As someone who had everything, and a future, too. There was nothing I couldn’t do or be, she seemed to think. They hated it and wanted it. They could have killed and eaten me.

There were other fantasies about me. A woman in her fifties had told Alicia that I made the women feel inadequate. I was a problem-free rich kid bumming around the world before going to work for a bank. “We’re trying to restart our troubled lives here. He’s just passing through,” she said.

“Maybe that is what you are,” Alicia continued, after she’d told me, throwing down her roll-up and rubbing out the stub with her sandal. “You have the confidence, poise, and sense of entitlement of a rich kid. Isn’t that right?”

I didn’t answer; I didn’t know what to say. I hadn’t anticipated this much envy. I had, though, known actors who’d become movie stars and been made paranoid and withdrawn as much because of the pressure of imagined spite as that of fame.

I labored over Patricia’s crumpled and folded flesh, humming and thinking. I was good at this; at least I’d learned to love giving comfort and pleasure.

I said, “How can I deal with this? I am beginning to feel like an object. It is not pleasant, it’s persecution.”

“You are supremely enviable,” she said, her voice muffled by the towel. “You’re like the woman everyone wants but no one understands. What you require is support and protection.”

“Who from?”

“That is up to you. But you must ask for it.” She went on, “It doesn’t sound as if you’ve done the wrong thing, Oddjob. You’ve made her and some of the others lovesick but you haven’t misled anyone. You’re a good lad. Women of Alicia’s age—they’d fall in love with a plank of wood.”

I was working hard at Patricia’s body. To my dismay, as I punched and pummeled, she didn’t seem to relax, but began breathing harder.

She turned, put out her hands, and untied the string that held up my trousers.

“Please, Patricia,” I said. “Don’t—”

She was holding my penis. “That’s a mighty fine thing you’ve got there. Know how to use it?”

“No, I guess you could show me.”

“You haven’t slept with Alicia?”

“That’s right.”

“You’re a good boy, then. Now, be an even better boy for me.”

Her eyes were glazed with desire.

I said, “I thought you were supposed to be a wise woman?”

“Even the wise need a prick now and again. You’ve been fluttering your eyelashes at me for days, don’t think I haven’t noticed. I’m very intuitive. Now, can you follow through?”

I didn’t want to disappoint her; I didn’t want her to feel her age or resent me.

Her hands were rough, and at one point I wondered whether she might be wearing gloves. I remembered that for exercise she liked to build stone walls. But, to my surprise, I became excited.