Using a single interlude -- a brief encounter of old lovers; two bodies entwined on a bed at midday -- Minot defines the distance that erupts at what seems to be the height of connection, as well as the extent to which the senses deceive, and the intensely private eroticism of fantasy and the imagination.

Minot's lovers are mesmerizing in their individual journeys -- one moving toward a kind of holy consummation, the other toward abnegation and blank despair.