THE FORTY-FIRST
After the party, Martin took the children back to Dana and made his way back to his little flat more or less by muscle memory. He fell on his bed, lit up a cigarette, only to crush it out immediately and toss it out the window. What now? He hated such compulsory questions as much as he did his aimless wandering from window to door, and his useless crashing on the bed and getting back up again neurotically and sitting down at his table, the pointless picking up and setting back down of the work in front of him. He suddenly had the sense of it all being wrong and that it always had been wrong, that we’re just playing at it, that we’re merely sort of celebrating, that we just kind of muddle along gaily, doing well at the very edge of the abyss.
He glanced at the mirror on th
