The newspaper reporter's wife first found the smears of newsprint on his white Oxford shirts during his second year on the job. The blots were in odd places: on his lower back, on the inside of his collar, on the part of his torso hidden by his arm. They weren't the full black spots a pen might have left; rather, they looked like the newsman had taken a small portion of a newspaper - say, a three-deck headline, or a sidebar - and rubbed it into his shirt.

When asked what he had done to produce the blots, he would shrug and make some joke about Rorschach tests: Doesn't the one inside the breast pocket look like a humpback whale? Or he'd shrug, just like he did when she wanted to know why he hadn't come home from work on time for dinner like he'd promised to.

Other times, he'd say, "I guess that's just the nature of news."

It was around this time that they stopped talking about anything but news, and even then he carried most of the conversation.

"Did you hear what Giuliani said today about putting the Confederate flag above the South Carolina State House?" he'd say while they were in a cab to a restaurant in Brooklyn or to the movie theater, the kind of things they eventually stopped doing altogether.

"No, I didn't," she'd respond. "My boss asked if I could work Saturday this week, is that OK with you?"

He'd just grunt and keep reading from his BlackBerry, where he could access all the major news sites. Then a few minutes later he would say something like, "You hear about the bus plunge that killed three American tourists and about 33 others in Naipul yesterday?"

Soon the blots spread from his shirts to his pants. They also got bigger and darker, 6-inch explosions of stark black newsprint behind the knee or just above the ankle. Some of the stains he could not get out in the laundry, and because he refused to go to work in clothes with even the faint remainders of stains on them ("What will my sources think?" he'd say. "I gotta get them to trust me, and no one trusts a man with stained pants"), they found themselves at J.C. Penny's almost monthly, buying the cheapest khaki slacks they could find.

After one particularly late night in the newsroom, she woke up when he came into the bedroom. He took off his shirt before climbing into bed, and in the glow of city light through the fifth-floor window she saw that there were splotches of newsprint on his chest. She closed her eyes and waited until he fell asleep before she examined the blot. She pulled up his undershirt. It was not a blot of ink this time but a few smeared words: rveillance tech ology nd th. That was it.

"Why is there newsprint on your chest?" she asked him after she'd finished buttering her toast at the breakfast table the next morning.

He didn't even lower the metro section he was hiding behind. "Nature of news, honey," he said. "Did you hear about the mayor's son DUI?"

Increasingly often, snippets of sentences appeared on his body: AP photo via the Roanoke Times in incredibly small print or For U.S-Nigeria go-between, ties yield in larger type. Sometimes there were even parts of pictures, but these were still too blurry and small for her to make out the subject. Everything came off in the shower.

One unseasonably warm day in March, she planned a romantic dinner for him, complete with champagne and fondue and candles and strawberries. He didn't get home until 11 p.m., an hour past deadline, but when he did he appeared grateful, maybe even happy.

"This is wonderful. It seems like we never eat together anymore," he said. "Did you have a good day at work?"

"We're training a new associate, but other than that, nothing exciting," she said. "You? Any big stories?"

"The usual," he said.

The windows were open, and a warm urban wind flapped the curtains. Romantic classical music played on the radio. The reporter sat down at the table, and she brought him a plate of steamed vegetables.

"First course," she said.

He smiled and picked up his fork. Before he brought even a carrot to his mouth, he spotted the radio. He frowned and leaned over and changed the dial on the radio to the 24-hour news station.

"You don't mind, do you?" he said.

Food obviously wasn't going to do it. Without a word, she pulled him out of his chair, pushed him against the counter and began to unbutton his shirt. He responded in kind, and soon they were entangled in each other.

Finally, she thought, she had his attention.

Then came the BEEP BEEP BEEP of a breaking news alert on News Radio 790 AM, All News All The Time. He slowed the pace immediately, and she thought she could feel his ears perk.

"Can you turn that thing off," she said.

He ignored her.