Interweaves story and dream, past and present, and philosophy and poetry in a sardonic and erotic tale of two couples--Tomas and Teresa, and Sabina and her Swiss lover, Gerhart. A young woman is in love with a successful surgeon, a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing. His mistress, a free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals--while her other lover, earnest, faithful, and good, stands to lose everything...

"Think about the game charades. Its rules are simple: no talking, of course, and little else. Each time we play with a new group, we have to figure each other out, with our different styles, backgrounds, and senses of the world, as we struggle to connect how we would act out something (say, Christopher Columbus crossing the Atlantic) with how other people might understand it. But as we play, a lingo can develop-with time, an upheld hand, bobbing along,...