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Mary, but I’m not naive. I field looks every day, like we all do,
     and turn down drinks in bars and deflect, gently if I can, the hard chargers. Robert had caught me off guard, that was all,
     coming on to me out of nowhere — and at a work function besides. That’s why I flushed. I should have just taken it as a compliment,
     as I always try to, and forgotten about it. But even as I mingled, introducing myself to the other panelists, meeting senior
     partners from big firms, passing business cards along to potential clients, I found I always knew where in the room Robert
     was, and twice I caught myself watching him, first as he talked to a young woman from Grant Thornton and again, minutes later,
     as he joked with the bartender. Okay. He
had
come on to me, after all, and he was a standout in that crowd, young and the only one there with his suit jacket in his hand,
     his sleeves rolled up and, it seemed, some appetite for life. Naturally I’d keep an eye out for him.
    Still. What shook me was the feeling I had inside. The… stirring.
    It was the same stirring I had felt for the first time six years ago, when I stood with Mark at my dorm-room door after our
     second date. He kissed me once, then harder, then ran his fingers across my cheek, down my neck, and to the open top of my
     blouse. “Can I come inside?” he asked, and I felt the tightness in my belly and I felt my legs go light and I knew, all at
     once, that I would have him in and that we would make love and that Mark was the one for me.
    I’ve felt it many times since. Always with Mark, of course, and always it leads to sex. We’ve been a couple for so long that
     I feel it less often now, but still it comes. Walking home from a movie on a warm night, say, when we’ve been a week without,
     and I picture, just minutes away, his strong arms holding me still. Or stepping from the shower on a Sunday afternoon, seeing
     his trail of clothes to the bed and tying my bathrobe tightly even as I follow it, for the pleasure the air will give me when
     he throws it wide. It is only now and then, but I do feel it still, this stirring. It is the stirring of sex, and it has only
     ever been a private stirring for Mark alone.
    But there it was, at the reception. I felt it when Robert made his play and when he shook my hand so… carefully, and later,
     even after he’d walked off, when I’d spot him across the room. The tightness in my belly. My legs going light.
    I tried to pass it off to the wine. I’d drunk two glasses very quickly, after all. But it wasn’t the wine. And the thing is,
     it wasn’t even Robert. Today I can barely remember what he looked like. It was simply… well… the possibility of sex with another.
    There.
    And that’s why, when it didn’t fade, I walked to a pay phone and called Mark and told him to be at my place in thirty minutes.
     He never stays over during the week, doesn’t even keep clothes here, but he stayed that night, and we made love and I… reached
     that place and afterward, lying on his chest in the cool dark, I felt okay again. Pure and cleansed. When I woke up the next
     morning, to the fresh breeze from the open window, the reception and Robert and any worries about anything were a world away.
    And that should have been the end of it. But it hasn’t quite been. I keep thinking of that night. What would Robert have suggested,
     if I’d gone for that drink? How would he have suggested it?
    I reach Sixty-second Street and see, just ahead of me, the garish awning of Champions. The windows of the bar are crowded
     with neon beer signs and pennants, and even from here I can see that half the city has hit on the same idea. Excited shouts
     pour out the open door, and as I search in my purse for my license, I shake my head at myself. Listen to me. If Anne could
     hear me now, she would laugh, and she’d be right to. A night of fun, and here I am worrying over nothing. Enough. I show my
     ID to the bouncer, he waves me