She instantly recognized the handwriting on the envelope. She didn’t even have to look at the address to know whom it was from. Her hands trembled and her heart beat faster. She knew that she shouldn’t even open the envelope. The letter itself, its words, its tone, its calligraphic schoolboy handwriting, its enchanting promises, would be toxic to her. In spite of that, she opened it anyway.

“My Sweet Karen,” it began. That opening made her feel nauseous. She imagined to how many other women he must be writing in this way. Yet the tender phrasing still brought her to tears. “I keep thinking about you,” it went on. “Not a single day goes by when I don’t miss you like hell.” ‘Like hell’ is the operative term here, Karen told herself, no longer believing him. The sugary tone reminded her of a familiar pattern. He must want something from me, she surmised. “I’ve been on my best behavior and things are looking pretty good here. In a month or so I’ll be up for my parole hearing. I was wondering if you’d be kind enough to whip up a letter of support to let these guys know that I have a solid character and that I’ve never shown any signs of violence towards you. Basically, I’ve got to prove to them that I’m not going to be a threat to society once I get out of here. That should be easy. The psychologist seems to be on my side and I’m on good terms with the prison staff. I’m asking for your help because you’re still the only woman of my life. We belong together, Baby. The sooner I get out of this joint, the quicker we can fulfill our dream of starting a life together. Who knows? Maybe soon we’ll have more than just imaginary kids. Love always, Michael.”

Karen could almost hear his melodious voice in these phrases, intermingling real requests with imaginary promises. She had fallen for his lines time and time again, even when everyone else turned against him. She recalled how sincere Michael looked on the day he avowed his innocence. “I swear to God, Karen, that I never laid a hand on Ana or on any other woman in my life. Babe, you know that I’m incapable of violence. Hurting a woman physically is the most despicable thing I’ve ever heard of! Let alone killing her. I may be a jerk and I may have cheated on you, but you know better than anyone else that I’m completely harmless.” She remembered how she had nodded in agreement. After all, Michael had never hit her and he seldom raised his voice to her during their nearly three years together.

Even when faced with all the evidence that made him appear guilty, Karen took an oath at the trial. She stood by her man, as a character witness for the defense attesting to Michael’s gentle disposition. “All they’ve got is some stupid circumstantial evidence against me. This pack of lies has been fanned by the malicious gossip of the press, which would love to crucify me. I mean, what sells better than some sordid tale about a scorned lover who shoves his girlfriend under the train, in a tragic twist reminiscent of Anna Karenina? They’re having a field day with me. But they should have read Tolstoy more carefully. Because Anna Karenina committed suicide all on her own and so did Ana Popescu,” he had scoffed at the press coverage.

“Stop playing with fire. Stay away from him.” The therapist’s words still rang in Ana’s ears as she walked back to the subway station. “The man you loved never existed,” Dr. Emmert had told her. But instead of imagining Michael’s features, Ana now envisioned those of the man who had been real all along, the man who loved her truly and had the generosity to forgive her now, when she appeared to outsiders unforgivable. She saw Rob’s caramel eyes, his smile, a little awkward and shy, his slim body, at an angle, as if not really knowing what to do with himself, a pose expressing both self-confidence and an irreducible timidity. She recalled what her husband had told her one evening, before she had met Michael, when they were sitting next to one another during a reception at a family wedding. “So many people marry and then divorce a few years later. I wonder why that happens,” Ana had casually remarked. “Sometimes it’s for legitimate reasons,” Rob had replied. “But I suspect that a lot of times it’s because they never really take themselves off the market. They go into the marriage without making a serious commitment and continue to look around, to see if they can find someone better. I hope that we’ll never do that to each other,” he looked piercingly into his wife’s eyes. Ana didn’t avert her gaze, since she had nothing to hide. She told him quite sincerely that she’d never do that herself, not knowing how close she’d come to the brink of divorce in a matter of months.

After waiting outside the building for about an hour, Michael watched Ana exit the therapist’s office, where he had followed her. Fuck the restraining order! he decided, tearing it to shreds soon after he got it. He felt like his initial intuition was confirmed. I knew it! She’s having an affair with her shrink, he speculated. Dozens of women had washed away every last trace of her. Every kiss, every caress, every ounce of desire, every shred of memory of Ana had been covered over by countless others. Yet he still felt peeved that another man had access to his woman. Because in his mind, no matter what happened, no matter how many other lovers she’d have, Ana would always be his. Lightning doesn’t strike twice. The maids won’t save her this time, he thought coolly, glancing at his watch. It was 1:05 p.m. Too early for Rob or the kids to be home, which meant that Ana would be all alone. They’d have a nice little chat together, undisturbed. He’d be sure to thank her for filing charges against him.

When she stepped into his office, Dr. Emmert could tell that Ana was unusually agitated. They had scheduled an emergency session the day before, following Michael’s attack. Somehow, Ana thought, looking around her therapist’s familiar office, the restraining order she filed against Michael didn’t seem as much of a protection as processing this event in her own mind. She didn’t sit down as usual. Instead, she paced back and forth across the room, filled to the brim with nervous energy.

“Why don’t you take a seat?” the psychiatrist suggested.

But Ana acted like she hadn’t heard him. She turned to him and announced abruptly, “I hate Michael. Last night, I dreamt of killing him.”

Dr. Emmert gazed at her without any show of surprise. “You had this dream after his last visit?”

“Yes.”
“Why don’t you tell me about it,” he motioned towards the empty chair.

Ana plopped herself down, tossing her purse on the ground with uncharacteristic carelessness. She forced a smile. “It was funny. In a sad kind of way. It would have been comical, if it weren’t so tragical, as my daughter would say. I feel so angry.”

“Was it his last visit in particular that makes you feel this way?”

Ana paused to think for a moment before answering him. “Not really. It just pushed me over the edge. But I’ve been feeling angry ever since I began to realize I was this close,” she pinched a few millimeters of air between her thumb and index finger, “to destroying my life and compromising my children’s lives for a man who isn’t even worth a second glance. His last visit sealed the deal. Now I definitely hate him.”

There was something feral in Ana’s demeanor that made the psychiatrist believe her statement. It came from the gut, from the spleen. “Passion often turns to hate. Just as love turns to indifference,” he remarked, used to dealing with broken relationships. “What did Michael do in particular to make you feel so angry with him?”

“I can’t talk to you anymore,” Ana said, without opening the door. She felt a tingling sensation, shortness of breath and a rush of adrenaline as her body kicked into combat mode.

“So all those times you said you loved me meant nothing to you? So much for living for passion and art!” Michael said with a note of reproach.

Through the rectangular glass panel on the side of the door, she could see him make a theatrical, sad face; an inverted smile like a masked figure in an ancient play. He may have wanted to appear sincere, but he looked grotesque. “What about you?” she challenged him. “Would a passionate man ask the love of his life to sign a prenup?”

“I was only trying to protect our assets. Yours too, not just mine.”

“Yeah, right! Your paws would have been all over my money while you kept the house in your name alone. Would a passionate man become stingy all of a sudden?” she continued. “I said ‘yes’ to my generous lover only to end up with Karen’s stingy fiancé!”

“Hey, it cuts both ways. You became petty too.”

“Did I also require you to wear a certain uniform for me?” Ana let out some of the bile that had been building up inside. “I didn’t appreciate being told to only wear skirts around you or how I should wait for you when you came home from school. Even my daughter has been choosing her own clothes since the age of seven. You need to buy yourself a Barbie doll if you want to play dress-up!”

If anyone had listened in on the lovers’ quarrel that had just taken place between Ana and Michael, they wouldn’t have believed that they were witnessing the end of “the love affair of the century,” which is how the two protagonists, recently turned antagonists, had previously regarded their relationship. As Ana hung up the phone, her hand trembled on the receiver.

It’s as if two Michaels existed in her mind: the one before they told their partners about the affair and the one after. A small part of her still refused to believe that the tender, affectionate, charismatic, reliable and doting lover she had known, whose stated objective in life was to make her happy— “what my Baby wants, my Baby gets”—had morphed into one of those hollow men profiled in the psychology books her therapist had recommended.

Logically speaking, the two sides of Michael, the one she had known and loved, the other she feared and despised, couldn’t be reconciled. She recalled Michael running to greet her with unbridled enthusiasm each and every time they met. Even those over-the-top romance novels couldn’t quite capture the intensity of his real life passion. The tactile memory of his touch gently exploring her body before consuming her with an insatiable hunger still sent shivers of desire up and down her spine. Michael’s patience throughout her professional struggles and emotional vacillations still attested to the depth of his feelings. The ease and comfort with which they communicated struck her as unique. And the interest he took in her art, which he not only encouraged, but also inspired, made her feel like in losing her lover, she’d be losing a soul mate.

She recalled a moving, jazzy song she used to listen to with Michael. It described a woman letting go of her lover gradually, piece by piece, trace by trace, memory by memory. She now felt like she too had to let go forever of Michael’s passionate kisses, of the way he cradled and twirled her in his arms, of his excited ‘Hey, Baby!’ greetings, of his sensual caresses, of his desirous, flattering gaze that had made her feel beautiful and feminine, and, most painfully of all, of their joint dream of a happy future together.

Of course, had he listened to that love song, Dr. Emmert would have said that it didn’t apply at all to her situation. One doesn’t let go of a psychopath piece by piece. One runs away as fast as possible in the opposite direction. That’s what Karen should have done also. She recalled a photograph Michael had shown her, which featured him and Karen on the day of their engagement.

“I love you! See you after school,” Ana kissed her son on his ruddy cheek.

“Alright, Mom,” Allen mumbled. He turned away from his mother, to indicate to his peers waiting by the bus stop that he wasn’t a mama’s boy. Although it was already spring, it was still very cold.

Ana noticed that Allen had left the house without a coat. “Are you sure you’ll be warm enough? I could run back to get you a jacket,” she offered.

“I’m sure, Mom. I’ll be fine.”

Ana got the picture, but couldn’t resist giving him one last hug right before the school bus stopped in front of them. As she waved goodbye to her son, she was overcome by the feeling that she had backed away from the edge of a precipice.

As soon as she stepped back into the house, she heard the phone ring. “Hello?”

“Hey, Baby! I’m sure glad to hear your sexy voice again,” Michael said in a light and melodious voice. “I’ve missed you like hell.”

Ana’s heart pounded as she hesitated between hanging up immediately, as she knew she should, and tying up loose ends with her former lover. “I told you it’s over between us,” she said after a slight hesitation.

Michael picked up on her ambivalence. “Why? Our fight was just a snafu. We both know what we feel for each other.”

The word “snafu” bothered Ana. “Then why did you act so casual when I broke up with you?”

“You’re dead ass wrong about that!” he sharply contradicted her. “I was in total shock.”

“Not really. You were calm and flippant about it.”

“Come on now! You know that’s how I react to bad news. I become defensive and shut down,” Michael switched tactics, granting her recollection but giving it a different spin.

The bedroom door was shut, but Karen could still hear her giggles, her half-hearted protests, his tender inducements and his grunts. They kept her up at night, like a mocking echo in her brain, making her wish that Michael would do something more drastic, something overtly brutal, so that she’d hate his guts and find the strength to leave him. Karen didn’t even know who was with him in the bedroom. She hadn’t seen the woman go in and hoped to God that she wouldn’t have to watch her leave.

The less she saw and heard and felt, the more numb and deaf and blind she became, the lesser the pain. But sometimes it was impossible to ignore all the new ways he found to hurt her. In those moments, she was almost ready to cut the perverse umbilical cord that bound her to Michael in a mixture of pleasure and pain that kept her constantly hovering on the edge of despair.

Just when she thought she had enough and could take no more, Michael would back off temporarily. He’d take her out to a fancy restaurant, or make love to her tenderly again, or tell her in that sweet melodious voice of his that he loved her more than ever and that those sluts meant nothing to him. Sometimes he’d promise her that he’d join her soon in Phoenix. There they’d live out her dream of a happy life together, which had originally been his dream, if she recalled. That’s when the unbearable would become bearable again. Until the next time she discovered traces of another woman in his in his life, in his house, in their bed. Then the whole cycle of pleasure in pain would start anew.

“I got you a little something,” Ana announced with a coy smile, extending her husband a greeting card.

Rob looked quizzingly into her eyes as he tore open the envelope. “What’s the occasion?”

She shrugged. “There isn’t one. It’s just because you’re so sweet.”

Rob didn’t know whether to be grateful or weary as he peered down at the card. It had a picture of a little kitten and a sleepy puppy with its floppy ear over the kitten’s head, protecting her underneath it like a cozy cover. The caption read, “And yet it works….” He smiled at her. “Thanks.”

Ana approached him to give him a hug, then a peck on the cheek. “You really are a good person,” she repeated and this time she meant it, unlike during the days she was planning to leave him for another man, when her husband’s good character was just an abstraction to her. Rob sensed the difference. He heard in Ana’s voice a sense of conviction, which perhaps accompanied the freshness of a new discovery, of falling in love all over again with the person you have ignored for too long. As Rob reciprocated, wrapping his arms around Ana, he felt her soft breast upon his chest and sensed her rapid heartbeat through the thin texture of their shirts.

Michael felt something tickle his back. He brushed it off with a somnolent, half-conscious gesture, but the sensation persisted. He turned over and opened his eyes. A young woman with pale blue eyes and platinum blond hair lay by his side in bed. “Morning sleepy face!” she whisked away the sheet from her body. By now fully awake, Michael’s gaze went straight to her large, semispherical silicon breasts, white as powdered milk, with protruding, rosy nipples. His mouth gravitated to one of the inviting nipples, which he suckled greedily, then to the other, so that it wouldn’t become jealous. He slid her body towards him and gestured unambiguously toward his erect member. As she was slowly, skillfully undertaking to bring him to orgasm, like trained professionals do, by using both her hand and her mouth in a synchronized, rhythmic motion, he tried, absurdly, to remember her name and how they met.

Was it “Hallie?” or “Hollie?” That sounded about right. She was his second pick up on the previous evening, as he made his rounds to the clubs. Despite the lack of adequate sleep, Michael recalled that she had mentioned something to him about being an advertising major. The one before her that evening, a cute little oriental doll whom he nailed in the parking lot near another local bar, had also been a business major. These business majors sure know how to get down to business, Michael thought, looking down at his partner. Her mouth was opened into a perfectly shaped oval, her cheeks caved in from the sucking efforts which were beginning to arouse him. “Stop!” he said, motioning her to get on all fours. At the sight of her rounded, athletic posterior and the parenthesis of her slim legs revealing a set of pinkish-gray partially unfolded lips, Michael could hardly contain himself. He quickly placed on the condom he had left on the counter. After a few deep, violent thrusts that made her whole body plunge back and forth like a piston, he exploded inside her in a sequence of diminishing spasms, releasing a series of grunts that gradually dissipated into a complacent silence. Though Hollie might have been the business major, after he was done with her, Michael was the one who became all business. He sprung from bed and hit the shower.

“What are you doing with Kitt?” Ana asked her daughter. They had purchased the 1930’s doll, complete with her art nouveau bedroom set, only last summer.

“Nothing. I’m just moving her to the basement.”

“You’re bored with her already?”

“I’ve outgrown dolls, Mama,” the girl rolled her eyes.

With her diminutive frame, large blue eyes and delicate features, Michelle herself looked like a doll. “You’re only nine years old. How could you have outgrown dolls already?” Ana objected.

Her daughter’s eyes suddenly clouded. “I’ve grown up faster this year, I guess.”

Ana blushed at the allusion. “You never let us know you were so upset.”

Michelle placed the doll on the living room sofa. She sat down next to her, a little doll and a bigger doll side by side, both with blond hair and blue eyes, only Michelle’s gaze was so much more expressive than Kitt’s. “I saw how you and Daddy were upset. I didn’t want to make you feel even worse. Besides, you were sure you wanted to leave us. There was nothing I could do about it.” Her usually sparkly voice trailed off with sadness.

“You mean leave Daddy,” Ana corrected her.

“I don’t believe psychiatrists can help unless you’re clinically insane,” Ana said to her husband as they pulled into the parking garage. “There’s a place over there,” she pointed to an empty spot.

“Then he should be able to help you,” Rob commented.

“How so?” Ana pretended not to get the unflattering innuendo. “I’ve already broken up with Michael.”

“Yeah, but if he comes to get you, which he still might since I don’t think we’ve heard the last of him yet, I’m not sure that you won’t leave me for him again. Besides, there’s so much damage this affair’s done to our marriage. We don’t really know how to fix it. If left to our own devices, we’ll just go back to ignoring each other.”

Ana directed him a skeptical glance: “And you really believe that paying a shrink two hundred bucks an hour to tell us that we’re in love with our parents will fix all our problems?”

Rob took Ana’s cool hand into his. For the first time since she could remember, he chivalrously helped her out of the car. “This isn’t just about us.” His gaze shifted nervously. “I can’t even look my own parents and colleagues in the eye, given what you’ve done to me. At least now I’ll be able to tell them that we’re making some genuine effort to work on our marriage with a professional therapist. Otherwise, I’ll look like a chump who doesn’t have the guts to break up with his two-timing wife.”

Ana contemplated her husband’s statement as they climbed down the staircase that led them out of the garage. “I didn’t think you cared so much about appearances,” she said, without masking her disappointment.

“Yeah, well, you’d care more too if you had gone through the humiliation I have. But you’re incapable of putting yourself in my shoes,” Rob reproached her.

“It’s not like your colleagues necessarily have more empathy than I do,” Ana countered. “And I feel terrible about what I did. That’s part of why I changed my mind. But, frankly, I don’t care about what your colleagues and their secretaries think,” she stuck to her original point. “Ultimately, it’s our lives, not theirs. We’d be the ones to suffer had we separated. And we’ll be the ones to suffer if we stay together and our marriage is unhappy.”

Michael parked the car in the garage. Within a few leaps, he was inside the house. “Hey,” he greeted Karen. She was sitting at the kitchen table, licking the last traces of fat free yogurt from her spoon. “Still eating only fruit and yogurt?”

“I don’t have much of an appetite lately. I might as well take advantage of that for my diet,” she got up to place the spoon into the sink.

Michael followed her tall figure with his eyes, weighing in his mind the pros and cons of what he were about to propose to her. When she turned around to face him, he saw that the area around her nose was rosy, as if she had been crying again. “Do you have a cold or something?”

Karen looked at him reproachfully. “It must be my allergies.”

Michael breathed in, as he often did when he was about to raise a point he considered particularly important. “Do you want to stop by Andrea’s?”

Karen winced at the suggestion. That was their favorite restaurant, where they used to celebrate special occasions. “Why go there now?”

“I have a surprise for you.” He looked around slyly. “But I prefer to reveal it somewhere special.”

“What is it?” Karen asked, without much enthusiasm. She had had more than enough surprises from Michael lately.

“I’ll tell you when we get there,” he took her by the hand and led her out the door.

She followed him blindly. “What kind of a surprise?” she asked him again once they stepped into his car.

“If I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise anymore, now would it?”

introduction

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I used to love reading print newspapers. In 2004, when I started working at the New York Times, I was excited beyond words to discover that much of the Sunday Times was printed ahead of time and a stack of those early- run papers arrived at the Times building every Saturday. Not only did I work at one of the most respected newspapers in the world, but along with a paycheck, I also got the magazine, the Week in Review, the Metro section, and Sunday Business several hours before the rest of the world!

“When are you planning to move in with Michael?” Rob asked his wife, perturbed by the fact that their separation was dragging on in no-man’s land, neither still married nor clearly heading for divorce.

“Never,” Ana replied.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I broke up with him,” she announced.

Oh God, this can’t be happening to me! Rob thought. I had just gotten over the hump, used to the idea of divorce. “Why in the world would you do that now?”

Ana noticed that her husband sounded anything but pleased with the news. “Something’s gone terribly wrong. I don’t know what’s come over Michael. He’s like a whole different person from the man I fell in love with.”

“Not really,” Rob disagreed. “He’s the same person who cheated on, lied to, manipulated and then dumped his fiancée once he got tired of her and got a hold of you. The love of your life. Everything you’ve ever wanted in a man. Ideal lover… right… You were so blind, it made me sick! This guy gets more ass than a freaking toilet seat!”

“Please. You don’t need to launch into a character assassination of him.”

“There’s nothing to assassinate since he’s got no character,” Rob retorted.

“Just remember that Michael’s also been under a lot of pressure lately,” she reminded him.

I can’t believe she’s still defending that jerk! Rob fumed. “The poor guy… After he deceived and manipulated everyone. Now I’m supposed to feel sorry for him?”

“Nobody’s asking you to feel sorry for anybody.” The moment didn’t feel right. But when would it feel better? After a slight hesitation, she gathered the nerve to ask him: “Do you still want me to leave?”

“I’m not going to throw you out into the street,” he circumvented her real question. He wished he had the strength to tell her that it was too late; that they had reached the point of no return. But would it be true? he wondered, still feeling divided.

“Would you like me to rent an apartment?” she reformulated her question, sensing ambivalence.

On the following morning, Ana called Michael to set up a meeting with him. “I had a nightmare about us last night,” she said as soon as she saw him, her eyes anxiously seeking his for signs of concern.

The look she saw in his eyes, however, was one of voracious desire. “You and all your worries. Get in the car!” he opened the door for her.

Ana didn’t step in, however. “We need to talk,” she insisted.

Michael’s desire morphed into impatience. “About what?” Ever since Ana had spilled the beans to her husband, she needed his reassurance ten times a day. He hadn’t had so many damn “us conversations” with Karen in three years as he’d had with his girlfriend during the past three weeks.

“My love, don’t be annoyed with me,” Ana pleaded. “We’ve been going through a tough time lately. Please remember that my situation’s more complicated than yours.”

Michael looked away, to contain his mounting irritation. “How many times have I heard this sob story already?”

“It’s not a sob story, Michael. It’s our lives.” Ana walked over to cling to him, hoping that their physical contact could somehow translate into emotional intimacy, as before.

“What is it that you want from me?” he asked her, exasperated.

“A little empathy.”