Lately, Macon had noticed he'd begun to view Sarah as a form of enemy. He'd stopped missing her and started plotting her remorsefulness. IT surprised him to see how quickly he'd made the transition. Was this what two decades of marriage amounted to? He liked to imagine her self-reproaches. He composed and recomposed her apologies. He hadn't had such thoughts since he was a child, dreaming of how his mother would weep at his funeral.

In the daytime, working at the dining room table, he would hear the telephone and he'd pause, fingers at the rest on the typewriter keys. On ring, two rings. Three rings. Rose would walk in with a jar of silver polish. She didn't even seem to hear. "What if it's some kind of emergency?" he would ask. Rose would say, "Hmm? Who would call us for an emergency?" and then she would take the silver from the buffet and spread it at the other end of the table.

[ skipped a few lines ]

In midafternoon, Rose stopped work to watch her favorite soap opera. This was something Macon didn't understand. How could she waste her time on such trash? She said it was because there was a wonderfully evil woman in it. "There are enough evil people in real life," Macon told her.

"Yes, but not wonderfully evil."

"Well, that's for sure."

"This one, you see, is so obvious. You know exactly whom to mistrust."

Today's excerpt is from her most famous novel, The Accidental Tourist.