They had no rules, maybe that was the problem. They put their feet up on furniture, drank juice straight from the bottle, read at the dinner table. They had Mission-style furniture that Sara's mother had given them, carpet remnants, cheap plastic lamps. They had a big-screen TV on a sagging red milk crate and expensive computers with wires winding everywhere.

They both worked, and in addition Arthur was going to school. The way Sara thought, as a child, that she would live, as a grown-up, had dripped away to nothing.

Will we someday care about reading at the table? she asked Arthur.

They lay east to west in the darkening bedroom. Their computers whirred and glowed behind them.

I can't imagine, Arthur said.