Double delight

by Joyce Carol Oates

Terence Greene, a man seemingly without flaw or weakness, is a model husband, father, and citizen, with a picture-book home in the affluent New Jersey suburbs and an ideal position as director of a great philanthropic foundation. It is while performing his lawful duty as a member of a jury that he first sees exotically beautiful Ava-Rose Renfrew. She is testifying against a man accused of brutally assaulting her, and Terence tries to tell himself that he is stirred by her plight and not her person. Naturally, he manipulates his fellow jurors into delivering a verdict supporting her. But his pretense melts like snow in fire when after the trial he makes contact with Ava-Rose at the ramshackle house in the rundown neighborhood where she lives. Terence plunges into a searing sexual affair with Ava-Rose and enters the intimate circle of her raffish family, whose masks of warm friendliness and hearty vulgarity lift in unguarded moments to reveal monstrous manipulations of both his emotions