
He builds an ostentatious mansion in a Massachusetts town and begins an illicit sex affair with a high-school boy. He figured it was probably all downhill after that moment anyway.” Doug Fanning, the rich young banker being closely watched by the New York Federal Reserve in Adam Haslett’s 2011 novel Union Atlantic, seems similarly bored.

Dee explains, “He’d never cheated on Cynthia and never would… But sometimes there was a thrill in walking right up to that line, and in charming the other person into stepping over it. The whole thing is just a momentary diversion, something that offers him fleeting fun.
