for as long as suitable, rene says sebastian won't return though valentin doubts her—valentin keeps some of sebastian's clothes, moves his own clothes in from his house and rene gets rid of the rest—rene offers to buy a new wardrobe but valentin says not now—once for dinner he wears a new pair of jeans from sebastian, a golf shirt with the insignia of augusta national golf club, the course where the masters is played, and a blue belt—when rene comes home from work she says she gave the blue belt to sebastian as a christmas gift a few years back, she doesn't remember him wearing it, and she kisses valentin and says they should put it to use—naked in the bedroom with the blue belt she smacks him a couple of times in the ass, and they both laugh it off and they screw—sebastian keeps his job, he avoids imhotep at rene's recommendation—he finds he doesn't understand the context of his relationships with people, so he picks up signals and figures it out, sometimes rene explains what she knows about his relationships outside of her—in this way he thinks he'll grow into this life, and it will all be good, a second chance, a girlfriend, more than enough money and a couple houses—or he wakes up from his cosmic trip and he ends up back where he left off, or even worse with time having passed, he returns, and has no context with what's happened there either—nonetheless they all are worries that come and go, other than his father he's letting go of everything else, his connections in the old world maybe were too weak for him to care—but in his conversations with rene, he traverses the 2 worlds easily, sometimes confusing rene—he says, in the old world i'd buy bagels with strawberry cream cheese, but now i can't find that anywhere—in the old world i'd wake up and run 3 miles no problem, now i can't seem to last 5 minutes, must be the hills around here—in the old world there was an auto mechanic off of route 10, now it's a nail salon—rene just accepting it, or trying her best to, but she suggests that whatever has occurred he should probably see a therapist to work through it because for someone who thinks he or did just lose his real life, he seems to accept it all too easily—she does want to know more about anna and frank ho, the occupiers of her land from the old world, she wants to discover a connection with them—valentin says, they obsessively worked on their yard, seemed to be too busy to enjoy the beautiful yard anyway, had an enormous willow tree, and their cars would just go in and out of the driveway for work or groceries or whatever, i think i talked to them a total of 3 times, 2 of those times they stopped by my house to complain about some kind of smell coming from my yard, that a fungus had overtaken my lawn, and the thing is i know about yard fungus, my dad had it in his yard for a while, and i was pretty certain that i didn't have it—rene says, i wish we took better care of our yard, sebastian and i were never into it—it takes a lot of time that's the thing, it was a hobby for the ho's—rene looks out the window and imagines her yard with a willow tree and thick green trimmed grass, instead of this clumpy landscape, and she says, do you think i really believe you, all these stories about your other life?—yes to me they're true, but i don't blame you for wondering what's really going on, maybe all i am to you is someone who looks like me, because otherwise i'm not the valentin you know—rene keeps her eyes fixed out the window on the yard, she thinks about momentum, so much work to kick sebastian out of the house maybe she would have taken any replacement, and so she did, the man she thinks is valentin—she decided to give it a chance with this version of valentin and it's not bad but it's not good, he's the same person, but not quite, as if he's a stuffed-animal version, where the eyes aren't quite right—the previous version of valentin had a few more jokes to tell, he'd take more time with sex, and he seethed at sebastian, she and previous valentin formed a team strategizing over the best way to make sebastian disappear, the previous valentin even considered plots to kill or at least paralyze him, just for the joy of it, because the previous valentin wasn't afraid of sebastian, just an obstacle to be removed, while the current valentin needs reassurance that sebastian won't return, because if he does valentin would probably run back to his house—and maybe that would be good—but what's done is done, he's good enough, he'll grow into himself, get his head out of this game he's in, back to the old valentin—but anyway the previous valentin's anger served its purpose, anger toward sebastian now probably destroys more than it creates—the fight has ended, the secret affair is over, they're transitioning, she no longer needs a warrior to finish off her ex-spouse but rather a day-to-day living partner, who will help with dishes and listen to stories about work and tolerate bad horror movies with her—she says, while kissing him on the forehead and then the eyes and cheeks, you are here sweety just as i want you to be, and you are still the person that i have chosen for the rest of my life, and i hope the rest of yours—