"The unmarried are not pressured to tea and dinners, to small talk and the aggressive necessity of asking how one's home is in order," Victor notes with mild disdain. He has seen what the married world has to offer and while the companionship might be a soothing balm to his loneliness, he cannot imagine the incessant drudgery of such tasks.

"You seem to be in the wrong universe if you're not in the line of work kind to relationships," he remarks. "Do you think it some kind of cosmic joke?"