Summary

Chapter 38 – Rich calls home, and after a brief conversation with Kaya during which he hears Robin working in the kitchen (“I could feel the kitchen’s silent appraisal of me, of my acts of liberation, my remorse and rationalization, and of my failed experiments with the plutocracy” (296), he actually talks with his wife. He imagines several kinds of direness (including her knowing about the affair and calling him on the emptied checking account), but instead their conversation focuses on the day-to-day of parenting and functioning. This reminds Rich of how precious his life with his family is to him (“How do you do it? How do you span the nothingness? Through love, through music, through art, through the sharing of food, fucking, and experiences” (299) and how precarious it all is, given that he plans to turn it and his experiences with Amy into a...