"Ronald never brings anyone home from work," Maria complains as she pours a reedy-looking yellow tisane—Neith declines, privately, to call it tea—into printed basalt-resin cups and sets them down. " ‘No, no, Maria, they are very rough men and women, they are too coarse for you, you are very sophisticated and my work will bore you.’ Assface," she adds to her husband, without rancour.