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was. What she wanted to ask of me was, would I—could I—possibly move in with her?
    But she wouldn’t stop for my answer. Nervously she was dragging me by the arm flinging open doors and getting in their way as she tried to push us past them in her eagerness to show me the various rooms.
    “Now you’re not to say a thing, not a word till you’ve seen the whole flat. It’s really quite decent—at least it will be when I’ve tidied it up. And look—masses of space. I shan’t be in your way at all. Two bedrooms, see? One for each of us. Of course you come and go as you please, that’s understood. I mean it’s better than living in some dreary hotel. Oh, Honey, if you would, it’d be such a help. He must not come back here, you see. Not to this flat anyway. It’s called condoning. It’s very serious. In fact I’m supposed to change the lock on the door so he can’t. I like that part of it,” she said all of a sudden laughing quite genuinely, “I don’t know why but it absolutely appeals to me. I must get it done first thing in the morning. And his clothes. I don’t know what to do about them. His lawyers said send them to his club. Of course he hasn’t got one. Perhaps I’d better send them to his mother. She drinks.”
    We were in their bedroom by now, Dody finally silent as she stared at her bed table: empty match covers, aspirin, vitamin tablets, glucose, cough drops, nail polish, nail polish remover and a half-full glass of water. “None of it does any good,” she said frowning at the display, “except maybe the nail polish remover taken internally. Oh God. His mother. He says it’s all her fault. His father was an explorer and away all the time and his mother was too busy drinking to love him properly so he needs more love than ordinary people do.” The Indian girl had taught him all about Vedanta, an Indian religion where, as near as she could gather, everything is One, which meant it was O.K. to do anything you like whenever you like. Anyway, this Indian girl had got him very interested in it. He was always reading books about it. Her trouble, Dody’s trouble, was that she’d been happy all the first year of their marriage just being in love with him. It was true she didn’t care—didn’t even think much about anything else. Then he began getting nuttier and shouting at her all the time that she was living in a dream world and he was determined to crash it. Look around you, he kept yelling, feel, feel something about what you see. Something, anything. Hate! Hate well and maybe you’ll be able to love well.
    Dody had never asked herself a lot of personal questions. Three days after they’d met he had declared himself violently in love with her, and then they’d gotten married. He was strong. He had a lot of opinions. Dody sighed and her head made a slight movement as if buffeted by a particularly strong opinion. It was easy to imagine her going into orbit, a dreamy satellite content to revolve eternally around her sun except the sun’s course had become too erratic causing her to crash into reality. But now, said Dody shaking herself out of her trance, she was going to hate. Because he was right. It was stupid to be the way she’d been—passive and trusting; it meant getting stepped on. Her defiance was springing up at last. She would do all the things he hated. She would like all the things he hated. That was easy of course—he hated everything. She’d go to that man’s party. He hated him. She’d get a job. He never wanted her to have a job. And she’d get a divorce.
    Dody flopped on to the bed. I did think she was right about getting a divorce, didn’t I? I sat down on the chaise longue facing her and lit a cigarette. I recognized that this was going to be one of those exchanges where, under the guise of seeking advice, in fact she merely wished to be agreed with. I began agreeing.
    I said yes, I thought she was right about getting a divorce.
    “I mean it would be silly to