She had been with women, Vanessa admitted to Owen. She and her girlfriend in high school did things, and then there were others the year she went to the state university in Storrs before family finances—she had brothers who needed the tuition money more—forced her to switch to what was still called secretarial school, in Hartford. She became an office manager’s assistant in the bureau where Henry worked. She learned efficiency. The manager she assisted was a woman, unusual back then, and had tried to talk her out of marrying Henry and into coming to live with her instead. But, no, Vanessa had known she needed men, clumsy and simple as they were. She needed marriage, for a base. She had intuited about Henry that she could always get around him. He was older, he would take her on her own terms. He had never mistaken her for one of the cute clinging girls he could have had. She owed him one child—a son, as it nicely turned out—and after that he gave her her own space. He didn’t pry into her day. Weekends, she was his.

“What’s it like?” Owen asked her. “Being with a woman.”

He saw her amber irises alter, as shuttling interior pictures activated them. “It’s like being with a weak man,” she said. “Why be with a weak imitation when you can be with a real one? It’s all a matter, isn’t it,” Vanessa went on, perhaps unconsciously echoing that buried Bible never quite scrubbed from our brains, “of being known. You want to be known better than you know yourself.”

“You kill me,” he told her, “so casually mentioning these others you’ve had. I want you to be all mine.”

“No, Owen, you don’t. You’re like the rest of us. You like the muck and the muddle.”

“When was the last woman you slept with?”

“I don’t think I’ll tell you.”

“Then it was recent.”

“No comment, dearest.”

“Is she around here? She must be. You must tell me about it; could I watch? Could we all do it together?”

She contemplated his still-importunate penis and in a flick of amused indulgence licked the tip of it quickly. Her tongue was grainier than other women’s, it seemed to him, and more triangular, coming to a more muscular point. “I think not,” she told him. “If you want a threesome, the third is up to you to provide. What a wicked man you turn out to be, you funny dear. You’re such a puppy.”