As you can probably tell, I have too much time to think.

It was good to see you at Thanksgiving, though it was so brief. You did seem different. I felt, in some ways, like I felt when Lew came out of that awful place, by which I mean that something essential had changed. You were carrying with you another world, another hope—or maybe it was simply something unavailable to me, growing in you. I loved all those wonderful imitations you did of your professors, the way you made it all seem so ridiculous and unreal, as if you’d just returned from Patagonia. But this is the unreal place, where there’s no fake eccentricity instead of true madness, full of people who have blinded themselves to survive. I couldn’t help but feel that you probably imitated all of us too, to your new friends, that they’re getting the image of some antic town full of goofy characters.

I hate to burden you with this, but I’m worried about Lew and don’t know who else to turn to. He often seems to be speaking to someone angrily. Sometimes when I come downstairs to the office, he will have sweated through his shirt, his whole body trembling, and will look at me like he has no idea who I am. At other times he can be fine, but they seem like visits—like your visits from Boston—which deny the truth, the true place in which he has taken hold and is growing. It’s the place of his passionate voice and sweating, a place where he’s afire. Truer than this place. Truer than I am.

I’m selfish. I hate to think of my orbit growing ever colder. Especially with my own husband. With you.

I miss you.

Annie

Dear Annie and Lew:

All is well here. I am a nerd among nerds, but I do try to get myself a bit of kultcha every now and then. Last week I went to see a famous poet, whose name completely slips my mind, give a lecture on virginity in the nave of a vast and ornate Catholic church downtown. It was one of those entirely artificial situations: The church itself seemed like a kind of elaborate mock-up, and the event was sponsored by a group of extremely wealthy women “concerned about questions of women’s spirituality.” The lecture was a bit thin, though delivered with a flawless pretentiousness—pauses for laughter after jokes made entirely in French or Latin (the poet reminded me of a super-refined version of Alvin’s dad), and the pews shone with the hair of dozens of svelte women, hair so smooth and perfectly molded each seemed like a kind of elaborate baldness, their heads all slightly tipped, their smiles cannily amused. I felt as if I were part of an enormous and exquisitely crafted music box, the kind of thing made in the reign of Louis XIV, derived from a culture at the height of its decadence. It wouldn’t have surprised me if the ornate gold-leaf roof had opened up to reveal gigantic rouged faces peering in at us, the poet’s voice becoming a soulless mechanical tinkle as our heads nodded on their little pivots.