14
Winston
Lynn faded from my life like an unfixed print exposed to direct light or as the vibrant colors of some fish dissolve into dead grayness when they are caught and pulled from the water.
Her work now entailed much more travel than ever before, with trips to the west coast or New York several times each month. More and more frequently I found myself alone in our penthouse in Cambridge, resentful of what at the time I thought was her obsessive career. When she was at home, she was always exhausted. She never refused me sex, but it was no better than necrophilia, and gradually I stopped bothering.
I deeply regretted selling the house in Tiburon because I would have surely gone there. I doubt very much that separation would have shocked her into change, and divorce would have inevitably followed. I find myself wondering if that might have been best. But such thinking is futile. I did sell the house. I did stay in Cambridge. And we did stay together, if peculiarly.
My life become one of memory and fantasy.
Memories of days, nights, experiences, with Julie and Anne, and other women, some of whose names I could not even remember, some of whom I was surprised to realize I had known twenty or thirty years earlier, were incomparably more vivid than Lynn's infrequent, wraithlike presence.