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By Root 1086 0

of having seen all the films on his list and a bevy of independents and even a few remastered classics to boot, so for the first time in his life he felt culturally up to speed. And if perchance at the bar of the Soho Grand, where he made it a habit to have a cocktail after these dates with himself, a lovely young woman happened to engage him in conversation (such as Irene Winston, the cocktail waitress there, who was herself a shapelier, sexier double of Hannah from before Hannah-in-bed), he would be able to speak her language, for movies were the lingua franca of the young. And if after their talk she offered to, say, take the place of his wife, letting him ravish her at least, or after some time together suggest that he maybe kill his wife in a way that would cause him no guilt (impossible, of course) and then start life all over again, he might consider that too … that is, if his feelings for other women weren’t so obviously entangled with his feelings for Hannah. Therefore his infidelities, imagined as opposed to real, were really a guilty brand of ménage à trois, sins of omission rather than commission, not to mention that Hastroll wouldn’t start this affair unless he knew for sure (via a written, preaffair guarantee) that this younger, sexier, and shapelier version of Hannah would never go to bed as Hannah had (also, of course, impossible). Besides, all this was irrelevant, since every one of these fantasies was predicated on his getting up the nerve to talk with the other Hannah first—which he never did.

He grew accustomed. Hannah, usually a very finicky eater, ate whatever he made her, even broccoli, which she loathed but he loved, as it was loaded with antioxidants. Ditto wheat germ, which she’d resisted putting on her yogurt or cereal in the past, despite his pointing out that it was full of folic acid and helped prevent deformities in infants, should they ever decide to have any. “Children?” Hannah had said. “Hah!” But now, like a good girl, she ate every last bite.

He grew accustomed. He had total control of the television when he came home. So if she might say, “Ward, could I have the remote, please?” and then, when he held it out, “I can’t reach it,” he’d shrug and keep watching the Tennis Channel.

He grew accustomed. He didn’t have to dust the baseboards or vacuum behind the sofa. If the spirit moved him, he could piss in the shower or with the toilet seat down, which he often did. He could load the dishwasher with a few plates and cups and run it anyway. He could mix colors with whites. He could buy a dog, a cat, a parrot, a parakeet, a fish. An aquarium with snakes. Gerbils, hamsters, or mice. Once he got bored with the rodents, he’d feed them to the snakes. And if he didn’t like the snakes, he’d let them go free and turn into giants in New York’s sewers. He could turn their apartment into Noah’s ark. What the fuck was Hannah going to say? She was in bed, where what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. But he did nothing. He reveled only in his freedom. In bed, she was his sick sister/mother who’d taken the place of his wife.

He grew accustomed. In fact he enjoyed how routine their sex life had become. It was sex without expectation of mutuality, sex just for him; hooker sex. He liked to get into her bed after she’d been sleeping for a while. He liked it especially after she’d been drinking. While it was perverted—sick, in fact—when she was deep into REM, drunk on dreams and wine, he began to feel her breasts. She mumbled his name or, sometimes, someone else’s, and odd things rooted in memories and phantasmagoria. She moaned as he felt her up, though she might have moaned anyway. He took off his pajama bottoms and put her hand on Mr. Penis, which she stroked attentively, automatically, like an infant when a nipple’s placed in its mouth. He spread her legs, put his hands on her ass, stretched her wide—she was always perfectly wet—and humped his half-asleep wife to his satisfaction. And after he came, she sometimes continued to mumble her gibberish; other times, her dreams only briefly interrupted, she