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the TV on top of the dresser, the closet door half open.
    â€œMaybe we should’ve waited till later,” Marlene said. She was sitting up in bed with three navy-blue pillows wedged between her back and the headboard. Her eyes had narrowed to anxious slits. “The Taylors still had their lights on. What do you think the chances are that someone saw us?”
    Stuart didn’t answer. He was trying to remember the past hour, but already it seemed like something that hadn’t really happened, none of the sensory information—the wet leaves on the ground, the prick of the cold night air under his arms and between his legs—available to him except as mere description: the word “cold” but not the sense of it, the word “naked” but not the fact.
    Marlene flung off the comforter and swung her legs over the side of the bed. “Damn it! This always happens. I always spoil things for myself. Maybe I should’ve had another glass of wine first.”
    â€œNo more drinking, Marlene. Not if you’re going to act like this.”
    His cautious interjections went unheard as she crossed to the dresser and began laying out clothes for work. “I’m tired of being such a scaredy-cat. I want to do everything, honey— streaking, public masturbation, you name it.”
    â€œAll very much against the law,” he warned.
    She turned and beamed at him. “Nothing bad will happen to us as long as we’re together. Trust me, Stuart.”
    As much as he wanted to believe her, he couldn’t. “I admire your confidence,” he said.
    â€œI’m
not
confident,” she insisted. “Not like you. My God, you
wrote
and
published
a
book.
That’s amazing! I haven’t done anything amazing.” She looked down, and he followed her gaze to the floor. “I think . . . I want to start flashing people. I dunno.”
    She finished setting out her clothes, climbed into bed and, with the reluctance of a performer not wanting to leave the stage, turned off the lights. They kissed and held each other, but the spell was broken; neither felt like having sex. Ten minutes later, the sound of loud, masculine snoring from her side of the bed startled him.
    Lying next to her—it was three in the morning, and he’d still not fallen asleep—he considered the smallness of the world, the connective fibers that existed for no other reason than to render a person self-conscious. This state in particular—the smallest, most insular one in the country—was a pressure cooker for self-consciousness. Everybody knew everybody else. Even Nathaniel Pike and Gregg Reese went to the same parties. In a growing panic—at 3:00 a.m., then at four and still unable to sleep—he remembered what Celia Shriver had said to him that afternoon:
    You think you can keep a secret in Rhode Island?
    Four-thirty, now . . . resisting the urge to go outside and do it again . . .

4
    Allison Reese and her boyfriend, Heath, were arguing. It was one in the afternoon, and neither had gotten dressed or even out of bed. Heath’s bedroom, one of two rooms in his East Providence basement apartment, was cozy and cluttered, with film canisters and videotapes piled on the floor, giant posters from gore and exploitation flicks covering every inch of wall space, their corners curled where the tape had dried and come loose. Heath’s prized possession was a high-definition, wide-screen Panasonic television, which he’d bought for three thousand dollars. Three thousand dollars wasn’t remotely in his price range, but he’d done it anyway, and in the weeks since, he’d joined the Panasonic online mailing list, sent in the lifetime warranty and read the sixty-eight-page owner’s manual from cover to cover. He wanted to be a good parent to his TV.
    With the DVD player on pause, Allison sat up in bed and blocked his view of the screen. “I don’t see what’s