Later still, years later, he would wonder why he had loved her so much, flashy and hard-nosed and shallow as Phyllis explained to him Faye was. For some months he dreamed of marrying her, so as to have her always at his side, and everything touching her—her two skinny, wan children, her rambling Victorian house, her jauntily improvised costumes, her casual mix of furniture (Jock’s inherited antiques, her faddish sling chairs and airfoam sofas), the photographs of her in her attic that she showed him, herself as a girl, as a college freshman, as a bride in white lace—everything touching her seemed holy. She tinged the world a new color, an iridescent stain in her vicinity, giving even the gritty parking lots where they met for a tryst a sparkling, poignant glory. Later he would come and stand on the spot where their cars had parked, one driver furtively becoming a passenger, and he would feel a hollowness spreading around him. Like strong sunlight she faded once-important sections of his life—his children, new wrinkles in programming code, E-O Data’s growth and struggles, even the news, as freedom marches wracked the South and a distant sliver of Asia took more and more front-page space—so that he moved insensible through these realms of former interest. This tinge, this sweet sickness of love, lingered in his system for years, an imbalance that was precious to him. Faye had dwindled to an inner sore, but that bitter remainder he pressed deeper into his sense of himself. She had given him, at thirty-one, a freedom that others (Marty Naftzinger, say) had long known, a freedom of the body. He was grateful but could not repay her—had ill repaid her. The women, including Phyllis, who advised him told him he was making too much of it. Women took their chances, their gambles, and sometimes lost. Faye had lost.