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accommodating him. It’s sickening. What did he ever do for you? Treated you rotten until you got successful and now treats you like the goose that laid the golden egg. And he patronizes you like crazy. All that ‘woman artist’ horseshit. As if being a writer were a disease. The sooner you get rid of that stiff, the better. I’d start your separation agreement right now, if you wanted. Only I can tell you’re not really ready.” Gretchen gets up, stretches, retucks her shirt in her jeans, and begins making faces in the magnifying mirror on her desk. She unscrews a jar of vitamin E cream, massages a little of it into her neck, and starts dabbing herself with perfume out of a Youth Dew bottle. The best-smelling Marxist in New York. If you smell good, you can conquer the world.
    â€œI’m so mad at the bastard, I’d like to castrate him, not divorce him. Divorce is too good for him.”
    â€œYou’re mad at yourself, babe.” The room is beginning to reek of Youth Dew.
    â€œYeah. I guess. The thing is, why did I need that myth of having this glorious daddy and protector? That’s what gets me so pissed. We’re alone anyway—so why don’t we just admit it from the outset? Bennett’s function in my life was mostly imaginary, wasn’t it? I’ve been making half the bread for the last few years. I don’t have fun with him. He doesn’t like most of my friends. And we practically never see each other. We don’t have kids—so what am I doing there, really?”
    â€œI thought he was a good fuck—though that’s no reason to stay either.”
    â€œWell, he is. But Jeffrey Rudner does better back rubs and goes down on me with a lot more gusto. And I’m sure there are plenty of fucks as good as Bennett. For god’s sake, he screws in his socks and pajama-top.”
    â€œYou never told me that.”
    â€œIf I had, you’d have made fun of me even more.”
    â€œYou’re damn right.”
    â€œDo you know what he did?”
    â€œAre there any variations on cheating I don’t know about?”
    â€œThat stinking hypocrite was having an affair the whole time he was being so pious about everyone else’s sex life. On the army base. When he was going on about how infantile they all were. And how they were acting out. And he was so superior to you and Alan. He said your tolerating each other’s affairs, baby-sitting for each other on nights out was unconscious oedipal something or other. God—I’d like to kill him.”
    â€œDon’t. I couldn’t get you out of that one.”
    â€œWhen I think that I was ready to have a baby with that son of a bitch. When I think of it! I’d be stuck with that hypocrite forever.”
    â€œYou could still leave, but it would be harder. Anyway, I’ll believe you’re leaving when I see it. I still don’t think you’re ready. All this rage. When you’re ready, you’ll walk out calmly.”
    â€œYou know what the oddest thing is?”
    Gretchen fixes me with her large blue eyes and then starts to laugh. “I know what you’re going to say.”
    Me, defiantly: “What?”
    â€œYou’re going to tell me that since he laid his sexual history on you, you’ve been fucking more and better than since you first met.”
    â€œHow’d you know?”
    â€œKendall’s first law of jealousy: jealousy makes the prick grow harder. And the cunt wetter. It’s so common you wouldn’t believe it. Also, just when you’ve finally made up your mind to split, the sex gets great, to stop you. But, you know what? It doesn’t last. Thank God.”
    I put my feet up on Gretchen’s desk too. “You know the weirdest thing? I don’t believe I’ll ever find anyone else.”
    â€œYou should only be so lucky,” Gretchen laughs.
    Â 
    When Gretchen leaves for her lunch date, I drift