Julia consigned to a dark cupboard on the third floor photographs and slides containing Phyllis’s image, captured before the era of family videos, but his four children were allowed to have their mother’s photograph in their rooms. The photos are still there. Owen often studies them, not just colored snapshots but studio portraits of Phyllis’s virginal self, in a wasp-waisted, wide-skirted dress of the time, with her bangs sleekly brushed and a certain arch sideways glance invited by the photographer’s banter. He blames her ghost, who, unchanging, gathers strength as the living weaken, for his sexual failures with Julia. Five years younger than he, his wife is still needy; there is hardly a night when she doesn’t interrupt his going to sleep with a hug or an inquisitive caress. Yet, always a great believer in the health-giving value of sleep, he unchivalrously clings to the approaching oblivion. That oblivion may soon embrace him for good does not deter him. His heart still beats and his prostate gland is still intact, but his receptors for her signals have degraded. Nevertheless, he finds her frustrated attention a comfort and solace, and he hopes, each night as his bedtime book grows heavy and nonsensical in his hands, to do better. Sometimes, he does, and both are greatly gratified. How lovely she is, naked in the dark! How little men deserve the beauty and mercy of women!