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vegetarian chili to cut down on calories, but Greg firmly believed in red meat at every meal. So I compromised with low-fat ground beef, which was wickedly expensive.
    Watching Greg cut carrots made me smile. He looked so cute, concentrating so intently. Greg had kind hazel eyes and, compared to me, was a giant at six-foot-two. He was thin, too, all elbows and angles.
    â€œGreg, what are you doing?” I asked. He was chopping the carrots into huge pieces. “Do the words bite size mean anything to you?”
    â€œAre you dissing my carrot-cutting abilities? Were you aware that Gourmet magazine has offered to pay me thousands of dollars to photograph my exquisitely shorn carrots for their cover?”
    â€œReally? That’s fabulous. When do we see the dough?”
    â€œOh, well, I turned them down of course. I didn’t want to sell out. My carrots are only for the eyes of my beloved.”
    â€œOh no, please, sell out. I’m ready to sell my plasma and root through strangers’ garbage for aluminum cans to recycle. At five cents a can, we could be out of debt, who knows, maybe before our eighty-sixth birthdays. So what do you want to do tonight?” I asked.
    â€œI have to go back to campus. We have a group project to work on.”
    â€œOh,” I groaned. “We never spend time together anymore. We never have time for sex these days.” Since Greg started grad school, we were down to having sex only once or twice a week. It wasn’t like I was starving for it: In the long, dull hours of unemployment, I was up to masturbating approximately fourteen times a day. While I still appreciated Greg’s gentle caresses, the efficiency of the Magic Wand was astonishing and reliable, and I was growing increasingly dependant on its ferociously intense, insistent throb. I needed to get a job soon, if only to keep my relationship with Greg intact. Greg’s friends had warned him not to move in with me. They said women never wanted to have sex post-cohabitation. I loathed Greg’s friends and would feign nymphomania to prove them wrong.
    I pretended to pout.
    â€œGuess we’d better do something about that.” He set the knife down, put his hand behind my neck, and pulled my lips to his. The kiss was delicious, but I was really hungry and not at all horny. Although the pertinent region of my anatomy was nearly callused from overuse, I didn’t feel I could say no when Greg took my hand and led me to the bedroom.
    We quickly got out of our clothes, as mechanically as if we were getting ready for a doctor’s examination. I lay on the bed on my back and Greg practically leapt on me, kissing and groping me with puppy-like eagerness. I clenched my jaw and willed myself not to shout, “Oh, just get on with it already, I’m starving!”
    Greg’s attempts to arouse me were thorough, if ineffective. “Come inside me,” I whispered in the most vixenish voice I could muster.
    â€œYou’re not ready.”
    When we’d first started dating, I’d loved how we could engage in foreplay for hours, and he never seemed the slightest bit bored or put out by it. But right now, my stomach was growling, time was of the essence, and I’d already given myself three orgasms that day (far fewer than usual as I’d been busy with the job interview). I could do without for one evening.
    I wondered if McKenna Marketing would call. Maybe I was being too hard on myself. Maybe I had done better than I thought.
    God, I was so hungry I was even salivating over the thought of the dinner salad awaiting me just a few short feet away. Oh Christ, we hadn’t eaten the vegetables I bought for that ratatouille recipe I’d meant to cook last week. Nuts. We did not have the money to squander on wasted food, and yet week after week I replaced clear plastic bags of gelatinous murk with clear plastic bags of fresh produce. It was a vicious cycle of good intentions. I