As part of Radio 4's Capturing America series, Mark Lawson selects short pieces by five American authors.

By Lorrie Moore. Dennis's wife has left him and his cynical, whisky-slugging friend Mave is trying to help him pick up the pieces.

She tries to assure him that the fact that his wife is seeing a Milanese man is a good thing; that it will make his wife feel that she's scruffy and so she will eventually long for her unkempt husband again. Mave thoroughly disapproves of the self-help books that Dennis is weeping into. She has a much more practical approach to her own love life, dismissing Dennis's accusation that her lover is a womaniser with, 'So, I needed to be womanised. I was losing my sheen!'

Read by Jennifer Lee Jellicorse. Show less