EXCERPT FROM "WHAT LOVE MEANS TO YOU PEOPLE:"
Chapter One
Jim Glaser still did what needed to be done, every day.
Forty-five minutes on the Lifecycle first thing in the morning, followed by another half hour dropping sweat on the Cybex machines. Surrounded by mirrors, but not looking at anyone, least of all himself. Unabridged books on tape helped, but he missed whole passages while his mind wandered and didn't bother to rewind. All he did anymore was read, but so fast that novels blurred into one another and he didn't pause to question the muddle of stories he'd melded together from separate books. Zak got into all of them in the end, spoiling every love scene and topping every tragedy.
Still, he was functioning well these days, arriving at the agency a little before ten, alert from the gym. When your name was one of those on the door, you could do what you liked about punctuality—an attitude he'd disdained a couple of years ago. Still, the important thing was showing up, and show up he did—able to smile, to joke, to conceal his newborn boredom with what they did here. True, he gave not, as in the old days, 110 percent, but on a consistent basis a good seventy-five. He also avoided client contact whenever he could. That kind of sustained effort to be "on" was more than he cared to muster anymore.
His two partners thought he was a brave trooper because he'd unfailingly come in through his darkness, even in the worst days of the first year, when the antidepressant didn't help and he'd sometimes had to ask Robin to hold his calls because he could not speak without falling-into sobs.
So, he still worked, still worked out. Still got lost in the lives of fictional people. Still volunteered, two evenings a week, with the abandoned babies at Bellevue. Went to the occasional cocktail party, industry function, art gallery opening, mingling and chatting, bubble-encased. Still went shopping, browsing through his fog for the book or moisturizer or shirt that would penetrate the veil of indifference for a little while.
But there were so many things he just didn't do anymore. Didn't call his friends—the handful that were left. Didn't make any new ones. Didn't go to plays, concerts, movies. Made no more dinner parties or drives up to Dutchess County on the weekends. Rented no more porn videos. Eyed no more men on the street.
