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and not the relationship she’d offered. She couldn’t say that, so she wanted me to act brutish so she could reject me for the way I treated her.”
    “You can’t be sure of that.”
    “Do you think I’m wrong about her?”
    Sovereign counted the seconds—one, one thousand, two, one thousand, three, one thousand—while Offeran thought about the question. As he counted he realized that he wasn’t trying to win anything. This insight made him wish that he could see the psychoanalyst’s face. He wanted to make eye-to-eye connection with the man and was sorry that he could not.
    “No,” Offeran said at last. “From everything you’ve told me about Valentina and your talk I believe that she would try to shift the responsibility for the breakup to you. But can you blame her?”
    “No. She’s a very ambitious woman, but success for her is more emotional than it is material. She needs to believe that she’s done the right thing. Guilt undermines her claim on success.”
    “Like losing does for you,” Offeran added.
    “Just so.”
    “Are you playing me right now, Sovereign?”
    “I don’t believe I am. I’m beginning to like these talks. And … and I only short-circuited the talk with Valentina because I really do think she’s right.”
    “Right about what?”
    “If I had approached her differently, if I had shared my feelings with her rather than just thrown the idea of a child on the table like some kind of stillborn hope, maybe … maybe we could have talked about it—learned something.”
    “So you stymied her attempt to blame you because what she would have said was true and you were trying to protect yourself from the pain of that truth.”
    “Yes.”
    “Has any of your sight returned?”
    “No.”
    “Not even a glimmer?”
    “No. Why do you ask?”
    “That’s why we’re here,” Offeran replied. “We’re here to unknot the psychological basis for your blindness. Every time I notice a change in you I will ask the same question.”
    At that moment Sovereign’s head jerked to the right.
    “What was that?” the doctor asked.
    “A tic, a spasm. I’ve been having them ever since I lost my sight.”
    “There’s a fly in here today,” Offeran said. “I heard it buzz behind me just before your head moved.”
    “So?”
    “So maybe you saw the fly and responded on an unconscious level.”
    “I didn’t see anything.”
    “Our time is up for today.”

    In the Red Rover car service car and through the front door of his apartment building, up the elevator and on the way to his white sofa, Sovereign was thinking; he was thinking about that fly and how quickly his head moved. He’d heard the buzzing too, but he didn’t remember seeing anything.…
    The idea that he made up his condition seemed preposterous. How could a man make himself not see the world around him? Like a child denying the obvious. But he wasn’t a frightened boy. Sovereign was a man who lived in the world, made a living, made a difference. How could such a person be petulant and stubborn enough to shut down an entire sense?
    It was ridiculous.
    Putting the absurd notion out of his mind, Sovereign set about doing his daily exercises.
    From the first full day of his blindness he realized that he’d have to work out. It was the home-delivery pizza and Chinese food that convinced him. He was eating badly and too much. He had once been a fat man. It took years of changing his eating habits to get down to a normal weight. Now that he was eating junk food again he’d have to balance it another way.
    The first day he did three push-ups, seven abdominal crunches, and fifteen steps running in place, bringing his knees nearly up to his shoulders. He did this circuit of exercises three times and stopped, winded. By the end of the second week he’d gotten up to twelve push-ups, twenty-five crunches, fifty running-in-placesteps, and ten circuits. After that he’d only increased the repetitions. By that Wednesday afternoon