If Mary-Louise Parker were your girlfriend, you’d laze in bed together on Sunday mornings, with just thin, jersey-cotton sheets as the only barrier between your bodies and the air, and she would read Wallace Stevens aloud to you. You’d debate the pros and cons of austerity in poetry until she said, “Honey, we’re saying the same thing,” and then kissed you through a smile.

If Mary-Louise Parker were your girlfriend, she would normally keep her

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