One day, when I had just been paid for substitute teaching, I bought groceries and set out to surprise him by cooking a real meal. I was making scalloped potatoes when he came in the door smelling like moss from his hours with the tree monk. He kissed me and asked what I was doing, and when I told him, he smiled. Then he began undoing each of the buttons on my shirt with such tender concentration that I froze, mesmerized into compliance. “Don’t move,” he whispered. He dashed around the cabin assembling his old Nikon while I stood there, bare breasted, knife in hand, over a bowl of half-peeled potatoes.

“It’s so incredibly quaint, Lora,” he said. “It’s so you. Here you are, two thousand miles from home. We have to pack in water. We shit in the woods. But you’ve found a way to make scalloped potatoes. God, I love you,” he said, and snapped the shutter.

“You hate me,” I said. “You humiliate me.”

He wound the film advance and shot again. “I love you and hate you equally,” he said.