“How much money are we talking about?” inquired Steven.

“For you, at 31, it’s $34 a month, for $500,000; and for me, at 33, it’s just $24 a month for the same payout.”

Steven soundlessly whistled. “That’s a lot of bread for such a small premium,” he admitted. “What do we need to do?”

Sam showed him about the detailed medical questionaire, the examination by the doctor, and all the rest.

“Alright,” he agreed. “I’m in.” Then he gave it not another thought.

As they had done for the past three of their seven years of marriage, the Robinsons took separate vacations. This year Sam went to the mountains and Steven, as usual, traveled to the shore. They never discussed their adventures, preferring to maintain their privacy. It had originally been his suggestion: a chance to unwind, get a change of scenery, a break. What went on during Sam’s excursions, Steven had no clue. Personally, he hooked up with the same woman – a colleague from the law office where they worked – and had a hell of a time. Steven assumed that his wife behaved in like fashion.

For the two of them, their presumed mischief was an open secret.

Two days before Steven left on his sojourn to the sea, Sam told him that, “Someone asking for ‘Stevie’ is on the line.”

Steven did a double take. Accepting the wireless extension, he said, cautiously, “Hello?”

It was Michelle. “You packed?” she chirped brightly. Steven sneaked a peak at Sam, who smiled wryly and shook her head before withdrawing to the other room.

“Why are you calling me on my phone?” he asked furtively.

Michelle’s laughter sounded like ice in a glass tumbler. “Stevie, your old lady knows all about us; has for years,” she added confidently.

“Well, still,” he said, “I don’t like to rub it in her face, is all.”

“You don’t suppose that she goes all the way up Mt. Shasta to sit in a cabin by herself for a week, do you?” Michelle came back at him. Steven’s face turned red. “And I know you’re blushing now, Stevie,” she said, with that damnable laugh again. “You wanna know what I think?”

“What?”

“I think Sam and Michael are hooking up on Shasta next week,” she said.

Steven started. “Why do you think so?” he asked.

“Last year, same time, he went to Shasta. So did Sam. Coincidence? I doubt it, Stevie. Hey!” she joked, “maybe the four of us could get a three-bedroom apartment. Two of us would have our own room of a given night, and the other two could share a bed.” She laughed again.

Steven shook his head. “That’s too complex. I’m not sure I could handle an arrangement like that,” he said.

“Why, Stevie?” she asked. “Would you be possessive?”

“I think so,” he admitted.

“Of Sam, or of me?” she queried further.

He sighed. “Both, maybe.”

Steven stood nude in the beach house, looking greedily at the bed, where Michelle was lying face down, her ample posterior inviting him to sample her delights. She stirred not an inch. He felt and then watched himself grow hard. With a primitive grunt, he advanced, climbed onto the king-sized bed and quickly slipped inside his lover. She moaned.

“Ooh, Stevie,” she said passionately, that’s just the way that Michael does it.” At that, he pumped harder, wanting to hurt her just a little. She liked it rough. At length, their passion spent, he climbed off her and smacked her hard on the ass. “Michael spanks me, too,” she purred. But, he thought, what was the point? Was she trying to get a rise out of him? It was working, he thought, growing hard again and turning her over on her back and mounting her again.

At the company’s New Year’s Eve party, Steven reluctantly found himself in the presence of Michael Durant, Michelle’s husband of nine years. He ran into him every year, on the same occasion, but only briefly, and always felt he had nothing to say to him. Michael was a hair stylist, of all things, whereas Michelle and Steven were attorneys. While Steven nursed a Grolsch, Michael stood there, putting away Scotch whiskey.

“Hey, Michael,” said Steven.

“Robinson,” growled Michael. Now Steven remembered why he found conversing with the other man tiresome; he always called people by their last name. A sign of disrespect, thought Steven.

“Hey, Robinson, you seen my wife?” asked Michael.

Have I? thought Steven with a smirk. What he said was, “Not tonight.”

He glanced at his watch: 11:30.

“Later, Robinson,” muttered Michael. “I gotta take a piss,” and he wandered off.

Was this mongrel really doing Sam? Steven wondered. With a shake of his head, he decided that her really didn’t care. That ship had already sailed. He went in search of his wife. The venue for the party, a huge, upscale restaurant in the heart of the city, must have held 300 guests, all in various states of inebriation.

At length, he found Sam, in the company of a stunning brunette. Sam had her hand on the other woman’s arm and seemed very comfy, thought Steven with a pang of jealousy. Across the room, he spied Michelle, talking to the CEO of the firm and gaily chatting her up. Steven glanced again at his wrist: 11:55.

“Get ready, everybody,” urged a boozy voice over a microphone. It was Steven and Michelle’s boss, Cartwright. “Grab the one dearest to you,” he went on. “New year in jush’ three minutes.” Everyone began to pair off. Suddenly, Michelle was at his side; Michael was nowhere to be found. On a huge television screen, a shiny ball dropped in Times Square and balloons and confetti dropped and an orchestra came up and pigeons were released. Steven searched for his wife, but Michelle was in front of him, her lips already fastened on his. She gave him a little tongue and he gasped.

“Happy 1979!” a voice shouted.

“What’s the matter, Stevie, never been kissed before?” she quipped. She grabbed his ass and squeezed. Steven drifted in the direction of Sam and found her in the company of Michelle’s husband. Michael’s hands were not on Sam, but on yet another snifter of liquor, which he was decanting down his gullet. Is drinking all he ever does? Steven wondered.

On Saturday, Steven observed the light on the telephone flickering, indicating voice mail. He pressed the recall button, but got nothing but a muffled voice he couldn’t identify. He checked the caller ID and saw that it was the Durants’ number. That sonofabitch, thought Steven, he was calling Sam at home. He knew it wasn’t Michelle; after the last time she’d called, he’d had a stern talk with her.

Steven watched a FedEx truck motor down his street and stop in front of his house. The driver exited and inquired if Samantha Robinson was at home. Steven told him no, but he signed for the package, a slender bundle the size of a small shoebox. Placing the package on her dresser, he stared at it and stewed. Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore, and tore open the bundle. What was inside stunned him: it was a battery-powered vibrator, flesh tone and large. A typed note appended to the device said: “Till we meet again.” It was unsigned.

“Stevie,” murmured Michelle thoughtfully over lunch one day in the employees’ breakroom, “I think that Micky is having an affair.”

“You already suggested that Michael and Sam were doing it,” he reminded her.

She laughed without mirth. “I wasn’t serious,” she told him. “Samantha would never cheat on you,” she scolded lightly.

That, thought Steven, was frankly a load off his mind. “But you think Michael is playing around,” he said. “How do you feel about that?”

“I’m pissed,” she said wrathfully, her face dark. “I mean,” she went on, “we do it almost every night, and I do whatever he wants. Whatever floats his boat,” she said resentfully.

Steven tried to ignore the irony in discussing with his lover the sexual perfidy of her husband. “Do you know who he’s seeing?” he inquired.

Michelle shook her head no. “I asked him who it was,” she said.

“How did that go?” he asked.

“Michael said he knows I’m getting it on with someone and it’s only fair that he reciprocate.”

Steven couldn’t, on the face of it, argue with Michael’s logic. “Michelle,” he asked, “have you been calling the house?” He recalled the muffled messages left on his phone.

She shook her head no. “No, not after you ate me out the last time I called, before we took our trip.”

“Hey,” whispered Steven, “keep your voice down.” He looked furtively about the breakroom, but nobody was paying them any mind.

“But,” she pointed out, “I like it when you eat me out,” and she tittered softly. Steven rolled his eyes, but said nothing.

“What’s your next step?” he finally asked.

“Maybe Micky and I should stop the separate vacations,” she suggested wistfully. Michelle and Steven each got three weeks vacation per year from the firm, two of which they spent together; the third they spent at home with their respective spouses.

Steven started. “Stop the vacations? You can’t.”

“Oh, I know that wouldn’t be fair to you, Stevie, but Micky is my husband,” she reminded him.

Steven said nothing. His mind was jumping. He reveled in the twice-yearly getaways. Sam and he hardly touched one another anymore, and the regular trips with Michelle were bacchanalias he wasn’t prepared to forfeit. So he decided to lay it on thick.

“But, the getaways mean so much to me, Michelle,” he said with a straight face.

“You having problems with the little woman, Stevie?” she inquired, paying scant attention to her plastic bowl of salad.

“I’m… disengaging from Sam,” he told her. “There’s no spark anymore, certainly no love.”

Michelle grew still. “Are you saying that you… love… me, Stevie?” she asked in a small, wondering voice.

“I do love you, baby,” whispered Steven confidentially.

Michelle’s eyes grew wide and her pupils dilated. She stumbled to her feet. “I… I’ve got to go. See you at the planning meeting, Stevie.” And she was gone.

When his paramour was out of earshot, Steven chuckled. “Steven,” he murmured to himself, “you are such a freaking liar!”

A week later, at his home, Steven’s telephone jangled off the hook. He checked the caller ID: Durant! It was either Michelle or that bottom feeder Michael. But then, Steven considered, Durant was a common name. Impulsively, he snatched the receiver off the hook. He listened.

“Hello?” came a raspy voice. Michael! “Hello?” he said again.

“Yes?” replied Steven coldly.

“Robinson? Why didn’t you answer like a normal person?” asked Michael querulously.

“What can I do for you, Michael?” asked Steven grudgingly.

“That’s better,” rumbled Michael. “Is Michelle over there?” he asked.

“Michelle?” he repeated. “No, why should she be?” he came back.

“Because,” explained Michael. “Michelle said she had a brief or a report or some shit she had to get to you this evening. I need to get hold of her.”

Steven ran all this through his mind before deciding it sounded reasonable enough. “No. Sorry, she hasn’t been by. If she stops by I’ll tell her you want to get hold of her.”

“You do that, Robinson,” said a grumpy Michael, and the phone went dead.

Next day, at lunch in the breakroom again, Steven told Michelle about Michael’s call.

“Shit!” hissed Michelle. “That sonofabitch is getting as possessive as a pit bull. He won’t let me out of his sight, unless I explain where I’m going, who I’ll see, and when I’ll get back.”

“Where did you have to go that was so important?” asked Steven.

“Not you too!” she exclaimed, but then her expression changed. “I got you a present for your birthday, Stevie,” and she extracted from her tote a professionally wrapped package.

“What is it?” he asked stupidly, taken aback and sore at himself for being even a little jealous. He carefully opened the package, slipping a finger under the paper and taking out the gift. It took his breath away. It was an exquisite Hermes necktie. It probably cost a couple of hundred dollars.

Michelle and Steven, as had come to be the rule rather than the exception, were assigned to the same case, a hit and run accident which entailed almost endless depositions and motions before the court. One night, as ten o’clock came and went, Michelle reached languidly over Steven’s desk for her diet soda, rubbing against Steven’s front. Instantly aroused, he pressed her face down onto the desk and ran his hands under her tight dress. Pulling the hem up to her waist, he pulled down her panties and entered her in a single abrupt motion. Michelle gasped, being taken completely by surprise. They both looked up as a tat-tat-tat came through the closed door. They’d forgotten to lock it. A shadow fell across the glass framed in the door.

“Who… who is it?” demanded Steven, on the verge of coming.

“Janitorial,” came back the reply.

“Later, please,” called Steven, and the shadow fell away from the glass panel.

Michelle sighed.

Steven came, mightily, then he too sighed.

“Steven,” murmured Sam in a sultry voice that he was unaccustomed to hearing.

Glancing up from the sofa, where he perused the inevitable legal brief, he said, “Umm?” He did a double-take.

Sam was dressed in a scanty yet fashionable red bikini. Once again, Steven remarked to himself what a sublime body his wife had. He gaped.

“What… what’s going on?” he stammered.

“I got this swimsuit for my trip to Fiji this fall,” she replied. “I thought I’d… see if it works.” She smiled demurely. She turned toward her bedroom and without a word, he fell into step behind her.

After they’d made arduous love for what seemed like hours, Sam said with satisfaction, “Steven, you’ve still got it.” Steven smiled. “I thought, after so much self-imposed inactivity, that maybe we weren’t sexually compatible any longer, you know?” she ventured.

They’d made love only a handful of times since the late-term miscarriage, nearly three years before. Steven didn’t know what accommodations his wife had made, but he had adapted well to the lack of marital loving. He had always held it a little against Sam, but now he began to have misgivings about the whole arrangement, as it had subsequently played out.

“I… love you, Samantha,” he murmured into her hair, holding her closer than he had in a very long time. To Steven, at this moment, this was not a line.

“You’ll always be special to me too, Steven,” she acknowledged. “I’ve been a bitch to live with,” she said. “You’ve always had a very strong sex drive, and I just cut you off after the baby…”

“Ssh,” he said, and held her even closer.

She continued, “I thought that, after I… we… lost the baby, that I never wanted to have a man’s hands on me again. But, time heals all wounds, I guess. Things are going to be different now,” she told him. He pulled back and looked into her eyes. “I promise,” she said from the heart.

“I didn’t believe Sam at first, Steven,” said Michelle, standing over him and edging aside with her foot the gun that had fired a bullet into his belly only 30 minutes before. It was a throwaway that the professional hitman had disposed of. “She told me that you would never love anyone like you loved yourself. She said that after the baby died, something inside of you died too. Sam said that the last woman you had loved was her and that she could get you back in one night. I guess,” she concluded, “that Sam was right.”

Steven lay bleeding on the carpet; in the background, the television was on but muted, with myriad colors flickering wildly on the screen.

Sam edged into view. “Michelle was right: you do look good in silk. I thought the Hermes was a classy touch; you might not think so, though. You see, Mr. X – that’s how we know him – was supposed to shoot you in an open space, like a park, but he said you were too flighty and he had to track you back home.

“I told you the truth last night, Steven,” she began. “That I couldn’t bear the thought of a man’s hands on me again. Too many bad memories, too many nightmares. Michelle,” she went on, stating the obvious, “isn’t a man.” Steven tried to form words, but found it too painful. “You always had good taste in women, Steven,” she added winsomely.

“Michael,” he whispered breathlessly.

Michelle said, “We considered getting him a Hermes tie too, but Micky will be happy to be cut free so that he can enjoy his man friends. Yes, he’s a fruit. Or, as they say now, gay. He hasn’t touched me in years, if that matters to you now, Stevie. He did say you had a nice ass, though,” she added.

“But…” he managed to get out.

“Yes, dear?” asked Sam blithely, leaning closer.

“What… was last night?”

“Last night,” she said simply, “was goodbye.”