“I’m at the store.”

“I’m sick of this—I want to stop working, too.”

I stepped into the checkout line. An old alcoholic kept telling the cashier to give her twenty plastic bags for free.

“I’m sick of this,” she said again. “I’m quitting, too.”

“Poor little bubble.”

That evening she came home early, no cocktails with colleagues, no theater. She didn’t greet me right away: she glanced up from her cell phone, then looked down again; transfixed, she slipped on her moccasins; with every message she let out a “Oh, Christ, what now” or a “Oh, Christ, not this, too.”

She started looking around for something. She must have found it: “Must this keyboard always be on the couch?”

She picked up the cordless keyboard I used with my laptop and carried it into the bedroom, and I followed behind her. She hadn’t looked at me yet. I followed her into the bathroom, too, where she pulled down her wool boot-cut slacks; they dropped lightly to her feet and she was left standing in her underwear.

“You want a gin and tonic, a martini?” I asked.

“Do we have beer?”

I went to the fridge, then returned to the bathroom, and found her sitting on the toilet in her wifebeater, holding her pale breasts up with one hand while wiping with some toilet paper.

“Is the announcement still being held up?”

She stayed seated, opened the can I’d handed her, and took a sip. A few sips later, she seemed to come up with an idea that gave her some relief. She got up, and setting the beer on the wide, flat sink, she knelt by the hamper where I’d draped the bath mat; she gave the heavy material a loud sniff, said it was filthy, and stuffed it inside an old chamber pot we used as a basin.

“You’re losing it,” I said.

Finally, her laughter. Guttural, eyes half closed. But after her beer, she stretched out on the couch and complained with a vengeance: the Roman council was destined to fail, soon she’d be out of a job, politics and culture were collapsing, money for cultural activities was so limited at this point, the dream was over.

I brought her some stuffed pizza, and she ate it, breathing hard, her head on a lumpy pillow. I finished a beer and opened another, checking if she wanted some. We went to bed before nine and I started reading her a Japanese story.

It was about a couple on their honeymoon, and they were so anxious, they couldn’t let go and enjoy the trip. Barbara listened, hands on her stomach, and started muttering to herself; then she was snoring. I felt a shiver of pleasure that she was asleep, and I kept reading in a monotone voice so my silence wouldn’t wake her; another half page on, my voice grew quieter; a few paragraphs after that, my voice turned to thought and I continued reading to myself. That passage from voice to mind was magic.