Men don?t leave their wives for me. They go back to their wives after me. They tell themselves they were very close to leaving, but I know it was more of a long shot than they do. We cry. I am sad, sometimes shocked, but always relieved because while I fall in love with men who are married I don?t know the point of breaking people up, especially if I am the point. I don?t want to put them in the same rut again, ten years later, that has brought them here. I?m great, sure, but not much different.

I provide a kind of service. This is good for him to have drifted so far away from her, to have been so deep in my camp, because when he leaves me for the reasons he will say, the swing back to marriage is on a long rope, speedy and whee! He must identify and fix -- through couples? counseling, prayer, long talks on the porch swing -- what?s broken, because disgrace has made his love for her definite.

I am a public service announcement for what?s over here that may look like a great time but slow down. You don't want to get mixed up in this. I?m glamorous like smoking and unprotected sex are glamorous. I?m an exciting thought and a bad idea. Doesn?t everyone want to beat a train at the crossing? Who has time to wait behind the wooden arm when the engine car is still a quarter-mile away?

God, you miss me, I know, but you feel better, you say, than you have in weeks, in our one quick phone call. I imagine you do, and the relief is palpable, concrete, because you almost did what you didn?t go ahead and do. And your wife is there, correct and pissed, and you admit that she is right, that you were wrong. It?s clear. Finally, something having to do with love is black and white. She let you down, sure, she took her eyes off you and you wandered into someone else who was looking right at you. Pulling you close with her eyes. Touching your arm, your cheek, kissing your collarbone, your neck. You smell good, I can still smell your skin on my face. But marriage is a promise, a sacred trust.

Your wife is brilliant. I'm not being sarcastic. She can pinpoint exactly when and in what conversation she saw your mind wander over to me. (You were replaying how we fucked on both beds at the Sheraton City Center.) You saw her notice, too. And she saw that you saw her notice. Marriage is a house of mirrors. All of the information you need just inches away, and if you say it isn?t, well, you?re a liar.

You used work as an excuse. Late nights at the office. You told her the stress made you absent-minded. She is no fool. She went along with that, was sympathetic, and filed it away in the shiny gray doubt cabinet. And now, in retrospect, everything makes sense, in a grubby way, and it isn?t a matter of who is taking back whom. You are both back. How can I make you believe I?m glad for you? Well, I am.

You two can live without secrets for the time being. Stripped clean. A bloody kind of fresh. These are skin-ripping wounds hit by cold air. They sting while they heal. You are there to dress each other?s wounds because she has accepted some blame, but hers are critical. You must nurse her back to trusting you, and she lets you, and she doesn?t mention my name again. Your skin crawls at the thought of hurting her again. You will never hurt another person. You touch her often and for no reason, so danger and doubt can?t slip in, because she might suddenly burst into tears, and not believe you want to be there with her instead of kissing me, or she thinks about us having had a sandwich together and a cup of coffee, before we were lovers, how I picked at the small fries on your plate. Maybe this is what threatens the fragile reconciliation.

You cook for her. You come home for lunch and reheat the homemade soup from the night before, arrange cheese slices and crackers on a plate. You sit with her on the sofa in the quiet house. There?s so much care training between you, on one private track. Your relationship has nothing to do with me and it never did. I know. (I am out in the open, no one's secret. I can start over. This is a good time for me.)

When you run an errand alone, when you have a minute to yourself, you think of me, but it?s not what you want to be doing, because you are telling your wife everything now, reporting at the end of another day together, grateful, when you fall into bed after the ten o?clock news and hold each other, face to face, like monkeys.


(This ran in Wild Strawberries, thanks to Utahna Faith.)