110.

We benefited from our fortune—of circumstance, of class, of education, of race, of our intelligences in their various and respective forms. We replaced passion with work. We replaced desire with work. We were never lazy. We bought property. We were never punished for our crime. We were savvy. We began with a little money and we went on to have more of it. We divided and filled our days. We killed our time. From the moment we abandoned our dreams of war and honor and good, there were tasks to complete. They were to do with the bars. They were to do with the people we knew, with our home, with our possessions. We took our store of time and used it to tend to the life we were constructing. We bought clothes and wore them. We saw doctors. We had our teeth polished. We bought food and we ate it. We bought a new car. We argued about its color. We took it to be repaired. When it was empty, we filled it with gas. We washed its body, its windows. We liked to see it shine. We liked to see the needle on full. We bought so many objects. Thousands and thousands and thousands of objects. We talked about them and celebrated them and argued over them. We arranged them in our minds and on our shelves. We put numbers in columns. We put art in frames and hung those frames on our walls, in our bars. We gave gifts. We made donations and called them acts of principle. We cleaned our skin. We gave things away. We bought new things. We gambled and won. There were periods of satisfaction, and of pleasure. There were periods of frustration and of exhaustion. The tar came and went. As did Tess’s patience.