Love. It wasn’t much, but in the absence of other options she counted on it to get her through, like a tax refund. From Eric, it came to her automatically, unearned. Why her? she sometimes wondered. It was true they had some things in common, it was true she was often available, and, yes, her looks were what some people called striking. She had a heart-shaped face, green eyes, cupid’s-bow lips. Her nearly black hair had started turning gray when she was eighteen years old and moved away from home—gray with relief, she always said. She’d hoped that she would grow a thick white feminist streak, like Susan Sontag’s, but instead it came in evenly, forming a kind of veil over the rest of her hair when she pulled it back. She liked the way her graying hair contrasted with her young face, but knew that one day her face would catch up and she would just be old.

“You’re a poet,” Eric accused on the night she first met him. He reminded her of someone—she couldn’t remember who—but the question nagged at her. They were at a university-sponsored mixer, and Eric was standing by what passed for the bar, alternating between cheap tequila and cheaper beer. There was a bowl of nuts and a bowl of Chex Mix with the liquor on the folding table: that’s what twenty thousand a year got you, party-wise. “I can tell by your hair.”

She wasn’t sure then if he was gay or drunk, but she liked both drunk guys and gay guys, so she let him monopolize her for the rest of the night. She’d been surprised when, at the West Fourth Street subway entrance, he’d pulled her in for a kiss. “Get a room,” she’d heard someone walking by say to them, not angrily but casually, as if it were a helpful suggestion. “What a good idea,” Eric said into her ear. He was never that bold sober, but Marianne didn’t know that then.

The next morning, she realized who he reminded her of—a fictional character in a computer game she played in her college French class. “À la rencontre de Philippe!” she announced, in bed.

“Qu’est-ce que c’est?” Eric asked. “That’s actually the only French I know.”

“A game I used to play,” she explained. “In the language lab. You remind me of Philippe. He was a depressed journalist, and you were supposed to help him with his problems.”

Eric frowned. “A depressed French journalist. Very flattering.”

“Oh, Philippe was very handsome! But he really was a jackass.”