The psychologist has not yet solved the problem of sex. There are, to be sure, gauzy late night shows on cable. There are, too, groaning online sites. In the dresser hides an old beat-up DVD from the Better Sex series that he used years ago in his Human Sexuality course. The students giggled at the sight of several poor couples (real people, not actors, said the enclosed brochure) struggling to appear nonchalant and natural in front of the camera. But the psychologist finds fast relief, and a certain gratification, at the sight of one of the participants, a gloomy, dark-haired and sharp-nosed woman who stars, along with her mustachioed partner, in the “Mutual Masturbation Techniques” chapter.

Beyond that there’s Nina, or at least the memory of Nina, the hope of her.

Every day he drives to the Center for Anxiety Disorders—two small rooms on the ground floor of a building that was once a cheap motel and then abandoned. Over time it sprouted several businesses: an insurance company, an investment office, a travel agency, a photography store. Across the street, on the bank of the murky river that runs through the city, a new mall is being built. The noisy cacophony of trucks, cranes and tractors seeps through his office walls like the commotion from a children’s playground. Across the narrow parking lot cars constantly fill the recently opened car wash. Sometimes he gazes from his office window at this daily parade, and sad, sweet music rises in him, like longing, at the sight of this attentive cleaning, the care with which soft towels and soft eyes caress the hoods, hubcaps, and bumpers.