He laughed with exhausted sadness. “You’re not a bad woman. You’re not a bad woman.” He reached up tenderly to touch my hair, but I turned my head away. “You don’t know anything about me,” I hissed wrathfully. “You like the way I look. You gaze into my blankness and imagine all sorts of wonders. They aren’t there. It’s your imagination, your poetry. It’s garbage. Let me save you the trouble of finding out the hard way.” He looked startled, shaken.
