At least I had always found this to be the case. Now, though, it wasn’t. Every day I found myself wanting the cloistered little bitch more, and every day it became more evident that I was not going to have her. The obvious solution – that I find some other female with a more realistic outlook on life and love – worked better in theory than in practice. I was not, sad to say, a horny adolescent who purely and simply wanted to get his ashes hauled. There are any number of ways to ameliorate such a problem, but mine was something else again. When lechery is specific, substitutes don’t work at all; they make about as much sense as eating a loaf of bread when you’re dying of thirst.

This went on twenty-four hours a day for a month, and if you think it sounds maddening, then perhaps you’re beginning to get the point. After the first night Phaedra had moved into Minna’s room and shared Minna’s bed, so at least I didn’t have to watch her sleep; but even at night the presence of her filled the apartment and addled my brain.

Yet I couldn’t even talk to Phaedra about it, not at much length. Any conversation on the subject served only to heighten my frustration and her guilt feelings without bringing matters any closer to their logical conclusion.

“It’s so wrong,” she would say. “I can’t stay here any-more, Evan. You’ve been wonderful to me and it’s just not fair to you. I’ll move out.”

And then I would have to talk her into staying. I was afraid if she moved out I would lose her. Sooner or later, I thought, she would either give in or I would cease to want her. It did not happen quite that way, however. Instead, I was like a man with an injured foot, limping automatically through life without being constantly conscious of the pain.

Hell. I wanted her and didn’t get her, and by the end of the month I had grown used to this state of affairs, and then one day she said that she had to go away, that she was leaving New York.