LOVE IN THE DARK Being Livy Random wasnt easy. It meant having a face a little too long a figure a little tooplump brown hair brushed and brushed yet always uncurling at the ends. It meant not being ableto make herself more than passably attractive. Worse than that being Livy Random meant beingMrs. Mark Random the wife of that smug lump asleep in the other bed. Mark wasnt snoring he was too neat for that. He was always making even stacks of things orputting them in alphabetical order on shelves or straightening rugs and pictures or breathingneatly in the other bed. Livy closed the bedroom door with a bang. Mark didnt stir he could fall asleep in oneinfuriating minute and wake up eight hours later to the second in exactly the same unlovelyposition and disposition. Her high-heeled shoes didnt bother him when she kicked them off andneither did scraping the chair back against the wall—he hated chair marks on walls—when shesat down to take off her stockings. And Livy Random wanted venomously to bother her husband. Mark Random had married her because he had been made sales manager of the electric batteryfactory and hed had enough of eating in restaurants while he had been a traveling salesman.Besides it looked better for a man in his position to be married. Livy had accepted himbecause she was past thirty and nobody else might ask her besides she needed someone tosupport her. So she cooked for him. She cleaned for him. She even tried to keep a budget forhim though that was his idea. He gave her a meager household allowance and nothing else. Nothing in this case must be understood as the complete and humiliating