52:PM

During his time as a hermit, Simon lived upstairs from two newlyweds. They rarely cooked, and when they did, things burned. They made love at two or three in the morning most nights, and then one of them—the girl, Simon imagined—got up and took a shower. He thought of the girl in the shower, all of twenty-three, freshly displaced from her parents’ home in Colorado, taking a shower in her downstairs apartment in Texas that she shared with her husband. Simon imagined she lathered her hair with unscented shampoo and repeated the phrase: My husband.