Summary

Chapter 4, "Lack," opens with Jamison returning to the states after her trip to Nicaragua. When she moves back that fall, she decides to drink differently. No more beer, no more run, only clear liquor and white wine, which feel purer to her. Jamison starts a doctoral program at Yale. One of her first friends in New Haven is a graduate student named Dave. She had visited him and his girlfriend when she was still a prospective student. His life with his girlfriend had struck her as particularly adult, intoxicating in its domesticity. That fall, Jamison falls into a consuming relationship with another graduate student named Peter, a whip-smart Henry James acolyte pursuing his doctorate degree. They drink a lot together. For the first time, Jamison has met another man wants to hear everything she has to say; every observation, every insight. Their relationship is...