Man in the Dark by Paul Auster

and job training for the poor . . . all in the realm of fantasy for the moment, a dream of the future, since the war drags on, and the state of emergency is still in force.
    The jeep slows down and gradually comes to a stop. As Virginia turns off the ignition, Brick opens his eyes and discovers that he is no longer in the heart of Wellington. They have come to a wealthy suburban street of large Tudor houses with pristine front lawns, tulip beds, forsythia and rhododendron bushes, the myriad trappings of the good life. As he climbs out of the jeep and looks down the block, however, he notices that several houses are standing in ruins: broken windows, charred walls, gaping holes in the facades, abandoned husks where people once lived. Brick assumes that the neighborhood was shelled during the war, but he doesn’t ask any questions about it. Instead, pointing to the house they are about to enter, he blandly remarks: This is quite a place, Virginia. You seem to have done pretty well for yourself.
    My husband was a corporate lawyer, she says flatly, in no mood to talk about the past. He made a lot of money.
    Virginia opens the door with a key, and they walk into the house . . .
    A warm bath, lying in water up to his neck for twenty minutes, thirty minutes, inert, tranquil, alone. After which he puts on the white terry-cloth robe of Virginia’s dead husband, walks into the bedroom, and sits down in a chair as Virginia patiently applies an antibacterial astringent to the gash on his cheek and then covers the wound with a small bandage. Brick is beginning to feel somewhat better. The wonders of water, he says to himself, realizing that the pain in his stomach and nether parts has all but vanished. His cheek still smarts, but eventually that discomfort will abate as well. As for the broken tooth, there is nothing to be done until he can visit a dentist and have a cap put on it, but he doubts that will happen anytime soon. For now (as confirmed when he studied his face in the bathroom mirror), the effect is altogether repulsive. A few centimeters of missing enamel and he looks like a brokendown bum, a pea-brained yokel. Fortunately, the gap is visible only when he smiles, and in Brick’s present state, the last thing he wants to do is smile. Unless the nightmare ends, he thinks, there’s a good chance he’ll never smile again for the rest of his life.
    Twenty minutes later, now dressed and sitting in the kitchen with Virginia—who has prepared him toast and coffee, the same minimal breakfast that nearly cost him his life earlier that morning—Brick is answering the tenth question she has asked him about Flora. He finds her curiosity puzzling. If she is the person responsible for bringing him to this place, then it would seem likely that she already knows everything about him, including his marriage to Flora. But Virginia is insatiable, and now Brick begins to wonder if all this questioning isn’t simply a ploy to hold him in the house, to make him lose track of the time so that he won’t try to run off again before Frisk shows up. He wants to run, that’s certain, but after the long soak in the tub and the terry-cloth robe and the gentleness of her fingers as she put the bandage on his face, something in him has begun to soften toward Virginia, and he can feel the old flames of his adolescence slowly igniting again.
    I met her in Manhattan, he says. About three and a half years ago. A fancy birthday party for a kid on the Upper East Side. I was the magician, and she was one of the caterers.
    Is she beautiful, Owen?
    To me she is. Not beautiful in the way you are, Virginia, with your incredible face and long body. Flora’s little, not even five-four, just a slip of a thing, really, but she has these big burning eyes and all this tangly dark hair and the best laugh I’ve ever heard.
    Do you love her?
    Of course.
    And she loves you?
    Yes. Most of the time, anyway. Flora has a huge temper, and she can fly off into these