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Susan Breen Not that Vera would ever admit this to anyone, but her chief pleasure in life had become arguing with her aide, Olga Popova. It was better than sex, as far as she could recall. Her husband had been an unmoving man. When he left her for one of his teaching assistants, she was wounded, but philosophical. This was old age. Decline, fall, death. Was she better than anyone else? Then came the further humiliation of requiring an aide. Arthritis. That or a home, her daughter said. Her daughter whom she adored, but who was on a six-year archeological