Again home strikes him as an empty shell, a dirty little studio under a freeway, filled with futile paper and plastic attempts to stave off reality. Which isn’t such a bad idea. He goes to the videotapes, sees the stack of them that Virginia and he made on their bedroom systems, when they were first going out. Perversely he feels a strong desire to look at one. Virginia undressing, in the casual routine of taking off clothes, with the thoughtlessness of untying shoelaces. Standing naked before a tall complex of mirrors, brushing her hair and watching the infinity of images of herself.…

“No!” The repugnance at his desire rises faster than the desire itself, a new feeling in Jim. If he becomes captive to her video image tonight, just hours after their last fight, how much easier will it be in the weeks and months to come? It’ll be so easy just to concentrate on the image … and he’ll be in thrall to it, having an affair with a video lady, like so many other men in America.

Fearfully he grabs up the stack of cassettes. “I’m pulling out for good,” he shouts at the video, and laughs crazily. He pulls an eyedropper of Buzz from his bookshelf and lids drops until he’s blind. Instant hum in all his nervous system, replacing lust. Like the buzz in the telephone wires, or the freeway magnetic tracks, a sort of drunkenness of the nerves, which makes him want to get really drunk. He goes to the fridge, pops a Bud, downs it. Downs another one.

Back to the cassettes. “I live a life of symbolic gestures, and not much more,” he tells the room. “But when it’s all you’ve got…”

There are nine cassettes of Virginia and him, the labels penciled over, sometimes in Virginia’s hand: US, IN BED. Should he save just one? “No, no, no.” He throws them all in his daypack, goes outside.