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still—both insensate and ungratifying.
    The sole exception—the only possible concession she would have made in those two years—would have been Rick, a patent attorney she worked with side by side. Rick was hardly Laura’s standard physical type; gaunt, pale and almost painfully thin, with a healthy shock of salt-and-pepper hair that was permanently unkempt, he resembled an artist rather than an attorney. Which he in fact was, taking up litigation only in the past ten years solely to help pay for his MS-stricken wife’s treatment. There was a fierce intelligence in Rick, erudition owing to his encyclopedic knowledge of classical Greek literature and philosophy, which he could quote and expound upon from memory alone. Laura admired and respected this eccentric figure, whose brown eyes seemed to burn with an inner torment. But what attracted her to Rick was something unspeakable—a primal magnetism he exuded from each pore, a feral passion she could sense burgeoning under his countless reference books and perpetually furrowed brows. She felt it reverberating in the pit of her stomach, and suspected it was mutual. They had taken to working late hours together, more often than not adjourning to Kelly’s, a nearby Irish bar directly across from their office. Over her proverbial gin and tonic and his proverbial Irish whisky—” Neat please, Jim-meh”—they’d shoot the breeze well into the evening, discussing anything from the Philadelphia Museum of Art to their own respectively rocky relationships. He took his marriage vows seriously, all the while admitting that as a man, he also had his own needs; and that where he could once release his frustrations through art, he now no longer even had that option.
    Laura sympathized with Rick, and felt an even stronger admiration for this man almost twenty years her senior. At the same time, it didn’t do anything to quell her draw towards him. On the contrary, it only fed the flames and she suspected that each time he caught a glance of her pouty lips trembling and her wide-open eyes that the feeling was likely mutual. One night, as they were walking past Love Park at around 10 p.m., she could take it no further. She stopped the taller (by nearly a foot) Rick dead in his tracks and seized him, forcing him to crane his neck down as she kissed him violently, hoping that the force and torpor of her lips would unlock his steely reserve. Her estimate proved correct, for they were soon groping one another furiously, obscured by the trees and serenaded by the rush of the fountain. They leaned back against a tree, their bodies pressed with an urgency that overpowered the both of them. She wrapped a leg around Rick, and pressed him against the tree, knowing full well that they could be caught at any time but not giving a damn either way. Their tongues lolled against one another, and she could feel the entirety of her body—from her shoulders to her calves—grow engulfed in a thin veil of mist.
    And then, as suddenly as it occurred, Rick pushed her away.
    “I’m sorry, Laura but… I just can’t. Not with Claudia suffering at home. You’re wonderful and if things were different, I… I…”
    There was no need for him to finish the sentence. Laura knew. She knew how foolish it would have been, not only emotionally, to act as a proverbial “other” woman, but professionally as well. They both knew that were this to ever make the office rounds, they’d be lucky to even collect severance. Besides, what were the chances of a man as eccentric, brilliant and charismatic as Rick sticking around for the likes of a frumpy HR rep anyhow?
    She left that night feeling dejected, but assured. That was nine months ago, and she had only seen Rick briefly in passing four or five times.
    She thought of him briefly as she lit another cigarette. She let it smolder, periodically taking a puff.  She finished the last of her wine and closed down her laptop. It was 1:19 in the morning and she had to