I couldn’t be more disappointed to find his picture here. Nor more perplexed. It’s possible that he is a superior, good-natured yokel and were we ever to meet (which we won’t), we’d cement a sensible common ground from which to express earnestly our different opinions about the world. (Sports, in fact, is the perfect lingua franca for such crab-wise advances between successive boyfriends and husbands who might otherwise fall into vicious fistfights.)

But in truth I couldn’t give a damn about Everett’s selling points. And I am of a mind to flush his picture down the commode then stand my ground when the first complaint is offered.

I take a deep, annoyed drag on my cigarette and attempt a difficult French Inhale I once saw practiced in college. But the smoke gets started backwards in my throat and not up my nose, and suddenly I’m seized by a terrifying airlessness and have to suppress a horrible gagging. I make a swift stagger into the bathroom and close the door to keep from waking Vicki with a loud grunt-cough that purples my face.

In the bathroom mirror I resemble a wretched sex-offender—cigarette dangling in my fingers, blue-piped pajamas rumpled, my face gaunt from gasping, the stern light pinching my eyes narrow as Everett’s. I am not a pretty sight, and I’m not a bit happy to see myself here. I should have gone out in the streets alone and figured out something to figure out. Certain situations dictate to you how they should be used to advantage. And you should always follow the conventional wisdom in those cases—in fact, in all cases. Always go up on deck to watch the sun come up. Always take a late-night swim after your hosts are in bed. Always take a hike in the woods near your friends’ cabin and try to find a new route to the waterfall or an old barn to explore. If nothing else you save yourself giving in to a more personal curiosity and the trouble that always seems to cause. I have gone poking around after full disclosure before my disavowal of it is barely out of my mouth—a disappointing testimony to self-delusion, even more disappointing than finding dagger-head Everett’s picture in Vicki’s pocketbook where, after all, it had every right to be and I had none.

When I exit the bathroom Vicki is seated at the dressing table, smoking one of her own Merits, elbow on the chair back, the TV off, looking sultry and alien as a dancehall girl. She is wearing a black crepe de Chine “push up” nightgown and matching toeless mules. I don’t like the spiky looks of this (though it’s conceivable I might’ve liked it earlier in the evening) since it looks like something Everett would like, might even have bought himself as a final, fragrant memento. I would not stand for it one minute if I was calling the shots, which I’m not.

“I didn’t mean to wake you up,” I say balefully and slink to the end of the big granddaddy bed, two feet from her sovereign knees, where I take a seat. Evil has begun to lurk the room, ready to grip with its cold literal claws. My heart begins pounding the way it was when I woke up this morning, and I feel as if my voice may become inaudible.

I am caught. Though I would save the moment, save us from anger and regret and even more disclosure, the enemy of intimacy. I wish I could blurt out a new truth; that I suffer from a secret brain tumor and sometimes do inexplicable things I afterwards can’t discuss; or that I’m writing a piece on pro basketball and need to see the end of the Seattle game where Seattle throws up a zone and everything comes down to one shot the way it always does. The saved moment is the true art of love.

Staring, though, at Vicki’s sculptured, vaguely padded knees, I now am clearly lost and feel the ultimate slipping away again, bereavement threatening like thunder to roll in and take its place.

“So what is it you were lookin for in my bag?” she says. Hers is a frown of focused disdain. I am the least favorite student caught looking for the gradebook in the teacher’s desk. She is the friendly substitute there for one day only (though we all wish she were the regular one) but who knows a sneak when she sees him.

“I wasn’t looking for anything, really. I wasn’t looking.” I was looking, of course. And this is the wrong lie, though a lie is absolutely what’s needed.