He felt a strange discomfort when he thought about her. How she moved, spoke, laughed. He didn't know how to describe it in his work, like a fever, or too little sleep, he would say, but that wasn't it. He knew that with a solid, conscious certainty, the way he knew who he was and what he was capable of doing with what little talent he had.

He would sit across from her at the table and want to say things that needed to be said and couldn't find ideas to say them. It is so very much like constipation, he once wrote in his diary. Something there that won't come, something lurking, black, dark, shadowy, facts in the closet. It was clear that the feeling was not mutual, she was not fascinated by anything about him, who he was, what he did. there was no delight in his company, no pleasure in his words or his accomplishments.

She ate with him because he was there, she slept with him because it was easier to do it than to say no, for the same reason that she kissed him in the mornings before she left him at the computer to type himself into little pieces of twelve-point courier till she came back. He was there, and it was easier to have him there than to not. It was easy for him to believe that this made him a part of her life. He seemed to fit into her empty hours so perfectly. She longed for no one, but never refused him. But the discomfort never left. They occupied two separate places, the knowledge that he fit someplace, and the discomfort that said he fit for now.

Everything in her discouraged for him all but the most utilitarian affections, the morning kiss, the Wednesday sex, the very occasional shoulder rubs which she always reciprocated, kneeling on the sofa. Rubbing firmly and without any real desire to touch him. And yet he could not say don't bother.

When she left in the mornings before the dishes were clean, before the computer would be turned on, he would sit in the cold silence of the little apartment and think about all that he wasn't getting. He would wonder if she thought about that. About the all that she didn't want on her way to work. Resting in the back of his thoughts would be the two things that hurt him, that her clothes had stayed in the suitcase until he unpacked them. And that she never told him about her family. He refused to ask.

Then he would stop thinking. Deal with the dishes, boot up the computer, and write. Try to put it all into words, which never made anything clearer, just kept it all in sight.

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