For the first month or two we made the basement room our bedroom, because Vexing preferred the damper, cooler air. Her bodysuit, which had slid off intact the day she woke up, remained in a corner, retaining its shape but growing progressively paler and more translucent, except for what I took to be its supporting structure, thin threads that looked like the veins of leaves. These grew darker, and the more I looked, the more they seemed to represent something beyond mere structure. The way they intertwined and repeated themselves looked man-made, refined. A language? I mentioned this to Vexing, who denied knowledge of such a thing, but one evening after work I found her hunched over the suit, puzzling at it with great concentration. She acted as if I had caught her at something illicit, and the next day the suit was gone. When I asked her about it, she declined to discuss the matter further, begging my indulgence, which I gave freely. Shortly thereafter, we moved upstairs.

The heat in the upper story revved her up, frequently to the point that I couldn't keep pace. Not that I was old, but I was older than she was. Not that it bothered me. Not much.

After a particularly grueling and exquisite week of little food and less sleep, I suggested she find an additional outlet for her boundless energy. She was aghast.

"I don't want someone else."

"Not a person," I said with a choking little laugh. "God no. A hobby. A job."

"I've never had a job. I wouldn't know what to do." She scrunched up her forehead. "What do you do?"

"I'm a miner," I said. "I dig up riches."

She smiled.

"I also work in a drugstore. Talk to my mom every day, take her out twice a week. Be with you every other moment I can."

She seemed daunted. "Maybe I should start out working for you."

"What did you have in mind?"

"I don't know. What do you need?"

There were some chores. I listed a few.

"No problem," she said. "What else?"

"I can't think of anything."

"C'mon. You want to get your money's worth. Use your imagination. What do you want me to do?"

The vastness of her invitation made me tremble. "You can't make me tell."

"Please."

"You'll laugh at me. Either that, or you'll be offended."

"I won't," she promised.

"No?"

She shook her head. "Absolutely not."

As it turned out, I didn't need much encouragement after all, and I unburdened my heart of its puerile little fantasy. Her response?

She laughed.

"There," I said. "You've hurt me."

"No, no. I'm laughing only because you're so silly. Of course I will. And anything else. And as much as you like. I was born to this. I feel it in my bones."

"You're not vexing at all," I said.

She smiled. "You're kind. With any luck I never will be."

So she worked for me, and hard. Scrubbed the floors, the windows, swept every day, did the bathrooms. I had to help her with food, because very little in the supermarket was familiar to her. But she had a flair for cooking and learned how to operate all the kitchen gadgets in a day or two. She washed the clothes, changed the sheets, dusted, vacuumed, polished. It was a good life. Contentment reigned. For a while.

One night we were lying in bed, and she was obviously troubled. I asked if I'd done something wrong.

"I don't think so." She faced me, as innocent and fetching as the day I found her. "Are you happy?"

"Completely."

This seemed to baffle her. "Then why aren't I?"

I replied that I couldn't imagine. Which made her even more puzzled.

"I'm kidding," I said. "You can't depend on me for your happiness. You've got a mind of your own. A separate identity."

"It goes against the grain," she said.

"You need to get out. Meet people, do something besides housework. Part-time, volunteer, school, whatever. Something."

"I could cook," she said. "Be a housekeeper. A scrubber."

"You could do a lot more than that."

"Like what?"

She was beautiful beyond belief. It came to me without thinking.

"Be a model," I told her. "You've got the looks. The style. You're a natural. A knockout. Let the world see. Let them drool and dream."

THE LOOK.

was all her own. Feminine, masculine, ingenue, queen. She liked to adorn herself with mirrors and other reflective objects, and this became something of a trademark. Sequins, foil, cut glass, polished stones; and mirrors themselves, appliqued to her dresses or woven in the fabric itself, some large but most the size of dimes and quarters, reflecting light, faces, bits of the world around her. She loved it when people stared, for like all models she craved attention. To be the center about which all else revolved was her constant desire. For all the world, you might have thought she felt unloved.

On the advice of her agent she shortened her name to Vex, which rhymed so fluently with what she was selling. Initially, she did ads for Macy's and Target, and in a year graduated to the big time. Vogue, Elle, Redbook: you couldn't pass a checkout counter without seeing her face. She modeled for Dior, St. Laurent, Gaultier, Miyake; did the runways in Paris, Milan, New York. When Playboy, promising discretion, begged for a spread, her agent advised against it. But Vex went ahead, and a week after the issue hit the stands, she appeared on the cover of Good Housekeeping. Working Women, Young & Modern, Cosmopolitan, Better Homes and Gardens: Vexing had the moves. She had the talent. She had the ambition. By the time either of us got around to noticing what her career had done to us, she was famous, and we were both dedicated to her new life.

THE THING IS.

she got more desirable with each passing year. She had a way of capturing your attention, pinning it, then extracting it as if it were some precious fluid. Sometimes the extract was envy, sometimes admiration. It didn't matter. She was greedy for praise and took what she got. She seemed to inhabit a different world from her public. A better one, loftier one by all appearance. It was funny, then, to hear her complain.

Her weight was a constant anxiety, but this was true of all models. Vexing also had a thing about height, not so much hers as that of the male models she sometimes worked with. Simply put, she hated short men. I was five-six (the same as her), no giant but no midget either, and it had never before been an issue. But one day after a long shoot with a "circus" motif, she came home in a rage, mouthing off against clowns and freaks and especially "stubbies," as she called them.

"What's wrong with short men?" I asked defensively, making sure I was standing as tall and erect as I could.

She had the broom in her hand, unconsciously prepared to sweep, although by then we had others doing the housework. "They're bossy and domineering. They're like old men. Or else they act like children. I've had it."

"Who are we talking about here?"

"Short men," she said sharply. "Don't you listen." I cringed. "How short is short?"

She threw the broom down and held her hand dwarf-high. I breathed a sigh of relief.

"Hairy little buggers," she muttered. "I need a bath."

She had other anxieties, too, chiefly involving her looks. She was paid, I suppose, to be fastidious in this regard; in a sense, it was an occupational hazard. Like most of the models, she took stimulants, along with massive doses of vitamins. She did the exercise routine. She binged on ice cream. When she was high, she was magnanimous, charming, and full of fun. When she was strung out, she turned petty and vicious. At work she got away with this roller-coaster personality because she was, quite simply, the best. At home she got away with it because I, like the rest of the world, was in her thrall.

The tabloids dubbed her "The Queen," and if not omnipotent, she was certainly ubiquitous: TV, magazines, gossip columns, charity promos, web sites. At home I called her my queen and quit my job at the drugstore to be by her side. It was a switch for us: now I worked for her, fending off the sycophants and fools, doing my best to keep her from going insane. Typically, this involved making sure she had what she wanted when she wanted it, a short list of necessities that included food, speed, praise, solace, and sleep. To my knowledge, I was the only one ever to hear her confess to jealousy or self-doubt, the only one ever to see her cry. I was also the only one she ever truly loved, this from her own mouth. In the beginning of our relationship she said this often, but as the years passed, it was a sentiment she rarely expressed. This made the times she did all the more memorable.

There was one: it was early winter, and we were in a hut on a mountain above a lake somewhere in Switzerland, at the tail end of an exhausting day modeling swimwear in the snow. In the hut were a cot, a wood-burning stove and little else. Outside, the production crew was setting up for a final shot, and we had a few minutes alone.

Vexing was wearing a quilted cape over a lame bikini. Her toes were blue from the cold, her face chafed by the wind. She was past the point of giving orders but bravely trying to keep up appearances. I helped her onto the cot, massaging her legs and putting her toes in my mouth to warm them with my breath. She made a sound and closed her eyes. Moments later she was asleep.

The hut was small and cozy. It reminded me of the cottage in our yard, which, since completion, I had barely set foot in. The wind rattled the door, and Vexing opened her eyes. Her hair at this time was short, her face rather gaunt and undernourished. It was a look models aspired to, suggestive of hunger, to be interpreted in so many ways. It was nothing like the face of the woman I had dug up in the garden. What was, however, was the way she seemed to be asleep, even now, with her eyes open. They moved without seeing, in jerky rhythms, as though she were following the flight of some insect, though it was far too cold in the hut for insects. Suddenly, she fixated on something invisible to me and uttered a sound. My father had suffered from epilepsy, but this was unlike any seizure I had ever seen. I thought to yell for help, but then she started to speak.

At first the words were too garbled to be clearly understood. Then it came to me that she was speaking a different language, one I'd never heard, or, for that matter, could imagine hearing, a combination of clicks, grunts, gurgles, groans, and hisses. Except for her throat and lips, her body was rigid. It was terrifying. At the same time it struck me how little I really knew of this woman. True, I had dug her up. I had given her her name and set her out on her career. In a way she was my creation, or at least (to my discredit), I thought of her as such. I shook her, gently at first, then harder. The wind howled. I cried out to her, stumbling over her name, feeling foolish for knowing no other. I begged her to wake up.

Gradually, she did. Her sounds died away. Her body relaxed. She opened her eyes, shivered, and sat up.

"Did I fall asleep?"

"Something like that."

She drew the cape across her chest. "I'm exhausted. I need something to get me awake."

"What you need is sleep."

"Don't say that. Sleep is death. I'm done with sleep."

"You used to love naps."

"No more." She pushed herself to her feet. "Now I choose to be awake. As much as humanly possible. Alert and on the lookout. That's my new motto."

"I liked you better before."

"That hurts my feelings." Her tone was careless, rather mocking. Facing me, she let her cape fall open and struck an incredibly sexy pose.

"How about now?" she asked. "Is this better?"

I didn't answer. The point was made. She took my hand as if I were an errant child.

"I do love you, Martin. Even if it sometimes seems I've outgrown you. I haven't. You care for me. You put up with me. When I'm ugly, you always take me back."

"You're not ugly," I said.

"No?"

"Marry me, Vexing."

She laughed. "You'd take a woman like me?"

"And a child. Let's have a child too."

"Oh no." Her laughter rose in pitch, becoming a little out of control. "That would ruin me. A child would be my doom."

THE FERTILE MOON.

smiles on some, but it didn't on us. Vexing stopped taking stimulants, and for five years we tried to conceive, without success. Although she denied it, I'm sure that Vexing was secretly relieved, as the prospect of pregnancy had from the outset filled her with dread. Models bearing children were, by and large, models on the way out. In the industry motherhood was tantamount to retirement. But beyond the threat to her career, I had the feeling that children were not much to her liking, as if in some other life she had had her fill. The role of mother and housewife certainly seemed familiar to her: she routinely graced the covers of Family Living, Good Housekeeping, and Ladies' Home Journal with that quintessential air of competence, good humor, and satisfaction. Sadly, this vision of motherhood rarely made its way home.

I wanted children. Always had. There was never a doubt in my mind. We went through all the tests, and the finger pointed at Vexing. Not infertile exactly, but "challenged." Her eggs seemed to kill any sperm that came within a yard. Not just mine, but anyone else's (this confirmed in test tubes), a quirk of nature for which she expressed regret, though once again I suspect that secretly she was glad. She didn't want a family, except for once or twice a year, when the idea would take hold of her and she would waver in her resolve. I took these rare opportunities to make my case for alternative solutions to our infertility problem. On one such occasion I broached the subject of artificial insemination.

"We've tried that," she said. "A million times."

"I was thinking of something different."

"Like what?"

I hesitated, which didn't help. "A surrogate mother."

It was a gaffe. I meant to say "egg," and I did, but it was too late.

"No way." She was hurt, and I sought to reassure her. "You choose, Vexing. Any woman you want. We'll do it all in a test tube. I won't come near her."

"Forget it."

"Why?"

"Because it offends me."

"That's the furthest thing from my mind."

She regarded me with suspicion. "What if no woman agrees?"

"You're world-famous. You get hundreds of letters a week. Who wouldn't agree?"

"I wouldn't," she said.

"Think about it. Please."

"This makes me sad, Martin. Are you tired of me? Have I ceased fulfilling your precious needs? Are we drifting apart?"

I knew the tone. Foolishly, I told the truth.