“What are you reading,” I inquired in my best disinterested voice.
Silently, she held her book to her face to reveal its title: An Exegesis on Repressed Masculinity.
I suppressed an eye roll. “Is it interesting?”
“Interesting enough,” she shrugged. “It’s probably the story of your life: sex and anguish, sex and decay, sex and self.”
“That sums it up.”
She smiled.
“May I?” I extended a hand across the bar top.
My name, in elegant font, was printed along the book’s spine. And my photo – an old one, taken with my now dead dog – was on the back.
“Where did you get this?”
“That guy over there. He’s the author. And” – she raised her ring finger – “my husband.”
He kissed her on the cheek and drank the rest of her martini. “Ready,” he asked in my voice.
She nodded, and then addressed me: “Keep it. I’ve read it eighteen times.” She had written her number on the first page.
We had sex two days later.
“I hope you don’t mind,” she breathed heavily afterward, “but my husband would like to join us now. Come on out, K.”
I watched in terror as I stepped out of her bedroom closet.