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fragrance here of the lavender sachets
Valerie kept in her bureau drawers. Except for the November wind overhead in the trees, it was very quiet. Still as the grave, Leonard thought. He sought his wife’s smiling mouth with
his mouth but could not find it. Shut his eyes, and there suddenly was the brazen coppery-haired girl in the red bikini top, waiting for him. Squirming in the darkly handsome young man’s arms
but glancing at him. Oh! she was a bad girl, look at the bad girl! Her mouth was hungry and sucking as a pike’s mouth seeking the young man’s mouth, her hand dropped beneath the
tabletop to burrow in his lap. In his groin. Oh, the bad girl!
    Leonard had the idea that Valerie’s eyes were shut tight too. Valerie was seeing the young couple too.
    “I found your passport, Valerie. I found these Polaroids too. Recognize them?”
    Spreading them on the table. Better yet, across the bed.
    “Only just curious, Val. Why you lied about him.”
    She would stare, her smile fading. Her lips would go slack as if, taken wholly unaware, she’d been slapped.
    “. . . why you continue to lie. All these years.”
    Of course, Leonard would be laughing. To indicate that he didn’t take any of this seriously—why should he? It had happened so long ago, it was past.
    Except: maybe “lie” was too strong a word. The rich man’s daughter wasn’t accustomed to being spoken to in such a way, any more than Leonard was. “Lie” would
have the force of a physical blow. “Lie” would cause Valerie to flinch as if she’d been struck, and the rich man’s daughter would file for divorce at once if she were
struck.
    Maybe it wasn’t a good idea, then. To confront her.
    A litigator is a strategist plotting moves. A skilled litigator always knows how his opponent will respond to a move. As in chess, you must foresee the opponent’s moves. Each blow can
provoke a counterblow. If Leonard confronted her with the Polaroids, the gesture might backfire on him. She might detect in his voice a quaver of hurt, she might detect in his eyes a pang of male
anguish. He was sometimes impotent, to his chagrin. He blamed distractions: the pressure of his work, which remained, even for those of his generation who had not been winnowed out by competition,
competitive. The pressure of a man’s expectations to “perform.” The (literal) pressure of his blood, for which he took blood-pressure pills twice daily. And his back, which ached
sometimes mysteriously, he’d attribute to tennis, golf. In fact, out of nowhere such phantom aches emerged. And so, in the vigorous act of love, Leonard might begin to lose his concentration,
his erection. Like his life’s blood leaking out of his veins. And Valerie knew—of course she knew, the terrible intimacy of the act precluded any secrets—yet she never commented,
never said a word, only held him, her husband of nine years, her middle-aged flabby-waisted panting and sweating second husband, held him as if to comfort him, as a mother might hold a stricken
child, with sympathy, unless it was with pity.
    Darling, we won’t speak of it. Our secret.
    Yet if Leonard confronted her over the Polaroids, which were her cherished sexual secret, she might turn upon him, cruelly. She had that power. She might laugh at him. She would chide him for
looking through her things—what right had he to look through her things, what if she searched through his desk drawers, would she discover soft-core porn magazines, ridiculous videos with
titles like Girls’ Night Out, Girls at Play, Sex Addict Holiday? She would expose him to their friends at the next Salthill Landing dinner party; dryly she would dissect him like an
insect wriggling on a pin; at the very least she might slap the Polaroids out of his hand. How ridiculous he was being, over a trifle. How pitiable.
    Leonard shuddered. A rivulet of icy sweat ran down the side of his cheek like a tear.
    So, no. He would not confront her. Not just yet. For