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pointed out. “They had it every which way.”
    â€œIt worked,” I said. “We’re talking about it now. And you know …” I lit the joint and handed it to her. “It’s not exactly our problem.”
    There are so many ways to start. Fingers resting on a pulsing vein on the wrist. A whisper, a warm breath in the ear. A hand between the legs, gently cupping.
    Or the direct approach. Like Blair loosening her robe, revealing a black thong and a low-cut black bra that made her breasts look wonderfully swollen.
    The thong. Is it not the greatest advance in fashion since the miniskirt? Never fails to delight. It banishes all other fantasies. It commands: This is where you’ll focus.
    A strong man could resist a thong. I am not that man.
    A thong does not necessarily lead to hot, dirty frenzy, but for Blair and me, it often does: grabbing, squeezing, probing, shrieks and shouts, spontaneous tears, ecstatic merging, a climax that feels as if it’s accompanied by a two-by-four to the back of the neck and a vacuuming of every cell in the body, leaving us cleansed and revived in the few seconds before we fall asleep like truckers.
    Or it’s the opposite: a slow-motion meditation on a square inch, a single sensation, a frozen gesture, time slowing, an almost imperceptibly spreading heat, a silent explosion, and a gentle emptying, like the tide rushing out.
    So it was on Saturday night. Or so it was for Blair on Saturday night. This wasn’t sex for her; it was making love—smooth and flowing and life enhancing. And why not? Her daughter was off at an elite college. Her husband was satisfied by his work, committed to his family, faithful to his wife. On her desk were sharpened pencils, in her closet new skirts, in her heart a hope for better that marked the start of every school year for her. No country home, no offshore accounts, no Manolos, but good sheets on the bed, wholesome food in the cupboard, an orderly household, a cool breeze from the park—in an unsteady, corrupt world, this was happiness of a high order.
    I felt all that and responded to it, but the woman in the refreshment line at the movies had unsettled me—I couldn’t keep my focus on Blair.
    I thought of women from my distant past, women I cherished when sex was new and I thought that women were my real teachers and my education was best conducted in bed. The long lost girlfriend with lovely, full breasts, breasts so big she could hold them up and lick her nipples. The college girl, a friend of a friend, who stayed with me for a few days when I was in law school and who came into the kitchen one morning as I was brewing coffee, opened her towel, and made me late for class. The articles editor of the law review, who showed up with a peacock feather, and the visitor from Toronto who liked it standing on the roof at midnight when it was just starting to snow and the city was silent.
    In between, my head flashed images of Blair, but not the Blair who was in bed with me. Blair half-naked at midnight in the service elevator of a cheap Paris hotel, Blair in the backseat of a rented car, Blair whispering about doing it with a man whose face she never sees. Hot images, heart-stopping memories.
    Then I thought of a more recent Blair: Blair at forty. For that birthday, she let me make a video of her. Just her, naked, in the bedroom—she put on a show. When it was over and she lay quivering, I turned the camera off and gave it to her. She put it away. I’ve never seen it since. She may have destroyed it.
    It was a total surprise when I conjured Jean Coin, in an unbuttoned white shirt, her jeans falling to her ankles, eyes wide open, lips moistened, hands reaching toward me, and I did that thing I can honestly say I’ve never done before—I had my orgasm thinking of a woman who was not my wife.

Chapter 9
    On Monday, I called Jean Coin.
    I didn’t think I would, but I did.
    Blair and I had discussed