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who could change the filter on an air conditioner and your perception of what kind of a day you had had with equal dexterity. In time, she came to learn that optimism was not something he really felt, but a convenience for him—something he could use as a sort of weapon. When things worked out, he would say that he had predicted it all along, and if they went wrong, he would turn that against whoever had believed in him. Until she met Les, she never realized that fear, not strength, could make people resolute. He knew that he was handsome and forceful. He knew how he appeared to other people. He was so sure of this, and of their surprised and happy reaction to him, that hewould play around—the confession of weakness that lightened his conscience also made others see him as forthcoming. Anyone smart enough to suspect that what he did was tinged with bravado would probably be won over to his side, anyway: interesting, this elaborate defense system in someone so urbane. The childishness made them warm to him.
    Another couple introduced Lucy to Les Whitehall, and after dinner he had taken her for a drink. Les’s talk was full of significant pauses and deliberate omissions. He made people want to find out about him, but he chose carefully, selecting people who would have the good manners to question him graciously, backing off if the board creaked, tiptoeing forward when the bridge seemed stable. When they got tired (it was impossible to find out enough to think you had gotten to the other side) he would suddenly take on life. He wore them out in a difficult situation they never wanted to enter into, then gave them something—a fond look, a hand—so that when they least expected it, they were safe after all. He let them feel approved of, but in reality he did not approve of himself or of anyone else. Anyone who had less than he had wasn’t worth his time, and anyone who had more was a threat. That was Les: he perceived of everything in terms of competition. He was still racing with the football, but running more slowly than he had in Carbondale, the letters on the back of the jersey replaced, when necessary, with his heart on his sleeve. The new goal was to get women.
    He had gotten Lucy so completely that it took her months after he had gone to realize that it was so hard to talk about Les because in some sense he didn’t exist. He relied on people to invent him. When he was quiet, she had supposed that he was thoughtful; when he was impervious to other people’s pain, she had admired him for being self-contained and not easily shaken by circumstance. Women adored him, and had always been there for him. He didn’t reject them, but like everyone who required such a thing, he hated both the person who provided it, and himself. It must have been frightening to him that he really liked no one. When he came close to a woman emotionally, he would move away physically. It worked out well for him thatany woman he would bother with preferred an emotional revelation to a physical thrill. But these excesses were rare. Now, it was a mystery to Lucy why he had bothered to attach himself to her. Les took it easy on himself. He shadowboxed until he got his equilibrium back, and if he had trouble regaining it, he bounced from one woman to another, staying on his toes.
    And Lucy had no one to tell it to. Just try to tell his colleagues with whom he had been so patient that he didn’t take them seriously, that his good manners were nothing more than condescension. Try telling the lonely women in New York that Les Whitehall was a fraud. Lucy would suddenly become ungrateful or worse, just another pretty, bitter woman, a simple stereotype; and Les—because at the very least everyone would grant that he was complex—would ascend to the category of What We Must Accept Though It Is Inexplicable.
    It shocked Lucy to realize that she could think such a thing. Wanting to be talked out of such ideas, she had even told many of these things to