“It was a bad risk from the start. I was safe only as long as he still hadn’t come up with a love of his own. When he did, and it hit him, I was all screwed up.
“It hit him about two and a quarter years after we were married. Twenty-seven months; that would be about right. We got along very well, those first twenty-seven months. He didn’t even know he didn’t love me. For that matter, I even forgot about it myself, I was so taken up in loving him.
“I can’t pinpoint exactly when she came along. I’m not that good. She didn’t break one of those electronic beams that open or close a door, her arrival wasn’t that precisely registered. But somewhere between the twenty-sixth and the twenty-eighth month she came along.
“The one thing I can’t explain now is how I knew. There was some subtle change in him. I knew what it was then, and looking back now I know that I knew then, but I still can’t say how I knew, any more than I could at the time.
“She was young, I knew that about her too. I saw him glance at a girl of eighteen or nineteen when I was with him on the street one day. He wasn’t interested in her per se, it was a speculative look, so I knew that he must have been comparing her to this other one, and I knew by that that this other one must be around the same age, eighteen or nineteen. Even in a love affair, detective work can be brought into play.
“Pretty soon I knew everything about her, everything but her actual face and her actual name. I knew almost as soon as it happened when they had begun loving up together.
“I used to sit by the hour, thinking, Maybe there’s still some way I could win him back. Maybe it’s not too late even yet. It’s happened before. It’s happened to others. Why not to me?
“Yes, but how? I’d say to myself each time. How? I was never able to get past that ‘how?’
“Then one night something happened that gave me an idea, and I thought I saw the way. I was sitting there alone, watching TV and yet not paying any attention to it, both at the same time, when the phone rang. It was a man, and he had the wrong number. He asked if Miss Somebody-or-other was there. I said, ‘Nobody by that name lives here.’ It turned out our two numbers were identical but for the two last digits, and even those were the same but in opposite order. He’d gotten them transposed, and gotten me by mistake. He excused himself and got off, and that’s all there was to it.
“But I started to think about it, and the more I thought about it, the more I felt it might be the very thing I’d been looking for. Jealousy. Try jealousy. Patience hadn’t worked, lack of opposition hadn’t worked. If I raised hell and stormed at him, I’d only lose him all the quicker. But maybe jealousy would do the trick. Maybe if he felt that somebody else wanted me, even though he no longer did, I would look good to him again. Men were funny that way: what the other guy didn’t want, they didn’t want either; there must be something the matter with it. What the other guy wanted, they wanted too; there must be something good about it. They were like sheep. Or I suppose I should say, wolves.
“It took me almost a week to get up enough courage to try it. I thought about it all the time, but I still didn’t do anything about it. I used to try to visualize his face on the night he would come home and find out I’d been carrying on behind his back. Stunned, first. Then angry. Maybe he’d even slap me. Maybe he’d swear me out, call me all those low-down names they call their women when they catch them cheating. I hoped so, how I hoped so. Anything, anything would be better than this indifference.
“On the day of the night that he would next be seeing her (and I told you, I was as sure of them as I was of my own birthdays) I went out and bought a few necessary props, I guess you might call them. Things I didn’t habitually buy.
“I went into a cigar store and I asked the clerk for the name of a good, expensive brand of cigar.
“‘Garcia y Vega,’ he said. ‘Twelve-fifty a box.’
“‘I don’t want a whole box,’ I said. ‘Just let me have two.’
“He put them into a small bag for me and remarked, ‘Your husband’s going to like these.’
“My husband, I said to myself, is not going to like these, is what I hope.
“From there I went into a package store and bought a half pint of bourbon, which was the smallest amount I could get. Since it wasn’t intended for drinking, there was no use spending too much money on it.
“I tried to think of what else might conjure up a fictitious masculine presence, but nothing further would come readily to mind. I was determined to make this as realistic as possible, no holds barred.
“There was a little elderly man, well, I should say about sixty, on the late-afternoon to late-evening elevator shift in our building. All the others were youngsters. I went outside to the hall and rang for him, after he’d come on, and handed him the two cigars with one of the strangest requests I bet he’d ever had yet from a woman tenant.
“‘Smoke these,’ I said, ‘but be sure you bring me back the butts. I want both butts back. And not too... er... soggy, if you can help it.’
“He did a very good job of covering up whatever surprise he must have felt. ‘Will tomorrow be all right?’ he asked. ‘I’ll smoke one when I get my coffee break at six, and I’ll save the other for tonight when I get home—’
“‘No, no, no!’ I said quickly. ‘I’ve got to have them both back, and no later than five-thirty. You’ll have to work it out the best you can.’
“‘It’s kind of heavy smoking,’ he said dubiously.
“I went inside and got the rest of the stage setting ready. I got out two highball glasses and poured about an inch of the whiskey in each one. Then I stood them side by side, very close together, on our knee-high refreshment table in the front room. Then I filled a big bowl with ice cubes, and ran hot water over them from the faucet, so they looked like they’d been slowly melting away for hours. Then I got hold of all the cushions in the room and scattered them all around that one particular place on the sofa opposite where the drinks were, throwing some on the floor, to make it look like there’d been quite a hot thing going on there.
“I went into the bedroom and I took particular pains with the bed. I pulled it all apart first, so that it looked like an earthquake had hit it. Then I telescoped the two pillows one on top of the other, and kept punching my hand into them until I had a big hollow in their centers. Then I got out a pair of my pink nylon underpants and shoved them down underneath between the sheets, but letting them show just enough. I mean, even beds that had had it happen didn’t look that realistic.
“I disarranged my hair a little bit, but not to an extreme, because the first thing a woman will do is see to her hair, no matter how preoccupied she is or was. I put on more lipstick than I usually use, and then I took a Kleenex and purposely smeared it offside from one corner, as though I’d been wildly kissed. Then I took the whiskey bottle, and using it like you do toilet water, put a drop here and a drop there and a drop behind each ear. The rest I sprinkled all over the carpet, so that I had the room smelling like a distillery.
“The bell rang and Dave had brought back the two cigar stubs sitting atop an empty envelope. ‘I kept one going on top a corner of the mailbox in the lobby,’ he said, ‘and the other on top a fire extinguisher on the fourteenth floor, and every time I had the car empty I’d step out and take a few puffs. But I feel kind of bilious. I never smoked two at once like that before.’