February Sucks: The Leap Day Clause

February Sucks: The Leap Day Clause

So this is my attempt at "finishing" the February Sucks story by the late GeorgeAnderson. In order to truly judge my interpretation, go read it here (WARNING! IT'S RAGEBAIT!):

February Sucks by GeorgeAnderson

First of all, let me say up front that it is a NO WIN SITUATION. I've seen the gamut of treatments where Linda and Marc are practically dead by the end, and on the other end of the spectrum and ending where Jim is a willing cuckold, watching his wife and Marc Lavalliere bang all the time with a sad boner. All of them have their lovers and haters.

There is NO WAY to end this story in a satisfactory manner. In the original, Jim and his wife Linda eventually get back together after Jim realizes that in the same situation, he'd cheat too and Linda gets to feel what it's like when the person she loves rejects her for a night of pleasure with another more attractive person.

My aim in writing this is to try to be original and most of all, funny. However, in order for this to be a true "February Sucks" treatment, I have to stay true to the original characters, because if I don't, then it's not a real treatment but just telling a similar story with completely different characters that just happen to have the same names. Now, here's my read on the characters in the original story.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Jim - The narrator. Husband of Linda. Marc LaValliere steals Linda away from Jim on their "special night" and they have sex. Jim loves Linda and is very hurt by her actions. He is 50-50 on getting a divorce. He doesn't want to break up his family.

Linda - Jim's wife. Has poor impulse control and poor self esteem. Had fun with Marc Lavalliere, but is definitely NOT into him. She "loves" Jim and does not want to get a divorce from him. Completely rejects all of Marc LaValliere's attempts to poach her after the night in question.

Marc LaValliere - Star tight end and the city's unofficial hero. He dances with Linda, takes her home where they have a night of tremendous sex, and is a perfect gentleman throughout. Afterward he sends flowers and voicemails saying he wants to know her "as a whole person," and Linda shuts him down every time. In the original he isn't cruel, just entitled and oblivious. To make the story funny, I'm making him a lot more clueless and needy, a golden retriever in shoulder pads. That's a bigger deviation, but the original barely gives him a voice.

Emma - Jim and Linda's 6 year old daughter. Loves her mommy and daddy. Knows there's some tension in the family and the marriage but is too young to "get" it.

Tommy - Jim and Linda's 4 year old son. Pretty much oblivious to it all.

Dee - Linda's friend who aids and abets her adultery.

Dave - Dee's husband.

Ellen - A very high-end escort and a client of L. W.'s. In the original, L. W. hires her to find Jim at a club on Linda's birthday and act as bait. She is the most beautiful woman Jim has ever seen, and he is completely taken with her until she turns him around to see Linda crying at their table and says "Now you know."

Phil and Jane - A couple who are mutual friends of Dee and Dave, Jim and Linda. They pretty much do nothing in the entire story and are irrelevant.

L. W. - Jim's Uncle. He's a lawyer. He generally thinks Jim and Linda should stay together. He also says that Jim would get ass raped in a divorce and lose his kids.

OK so in order for this treatment to make sense you need to go to the original February Sucks story linked above. Read the original February Sucks by GeorgeAnderson through Dee's reveal at the end of the bar scene (about halfway through page 2, where she tells Jim that Linda has left with Marc). Stop there and start this one. Everything before that is his and everything after is a very different February.

Direct quotes from the original story are italicized.

Remember, I have two goals: stay true to the original characters by GeorgeAnderson and make you the reader, at the very least, crack a smile and maybe even laugh out loud. Some of the jokes are stolen, but I only steal from the best.

If you want to see me do a nice "Burn The Bitch" ending, then read "The Beta Test" for a funny one and "The Hour Has Named Thee" and "Desperation Payments" 4c and 4d for more "serious" ones.

OK now we start en media res

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"Jim," Dee said, with the brave face of a woman about to explain a parking ticket to a rabid gorilla, "Linda isn't in the restroom. She left with Marc."

I looked at her for a long moment. Dee has a face like a patio furniture cushion that's been sat on at too many barbecues. It's pleasant, slightly dented, and never once improved by effort.

"Left," I said.

"Yes."

"With the football player."

"Yes, but it's just for the night, and she'll be home tomorrow, and-"

"Dee, I need you to stop talking. You're doing that thing where you keep stacking sentences like Jenga blocks in a hurricane. Let me see if I've got this. My wife and my best friend's wife, which is you, ran a god damn covert operation involving a decoy bathroom, a bribed bartender, and a getaway driver with a neck the size of my torso. And the only person who wasn't briefed was the husband. Me! I'd say that's a pretty good plan, except the Allies got to keep their landing date secret. I wasn't even given a hint."

Looking back, I think this is where my sanity snapped. I'm not saying I went completely mouth frothing barking mad, but I did go crazy to a certain degree, and I don't think I've ever recovered. Even to this day, at the end of my life, looking back. This moment. This moment is where my life flipped and I let go of everything I was holding on to. Including my sanity.

"Jim, I know you're hurt-"

Dee seemed to notice that something was fundamentally changing in me, and it frightened her. It was the correct reaction, frankly.

"Hurt? No, I'm reviewing your performance. Staggering! Four stars for logistics, one star for communication. The dress, by the way, was a nice touch. I assume it came with free shipping and a lifelong lack of accountability?"

She opened her mouth. I raised a hand.

"And before you say it's just one night, let me remind you that we have a rule in this friend group. Say it with me. 'Once and done'. We established it over wings, which is a sacred time, and I'm confident none of us took it as a suggestion. I'd like to see that rule applied to the person who broke it. I'm aware that you fucking think that exceptions apply to celebrities, the way parking laws apply to ambulances. But I don't remember reading it in the fine print."

"Come on, Jim," pleaded Dee. "Just give her this ONE thing."

"Dee, if I were present when your mom was pregnant with you, not only would I have PAID for the abortion, I would have performed it myself."

Dee's mouth was agape as I walked back to the table, where four people stared at me like a family watching the dog explain the stock market.

Dave, a man with the intellectual curiosity of a turd floating in a gas station toilet, said "Hey, buddy. You okay?"

I stared at the man who just asked me the most galactically stupid question I have ever heard.

"Dave, I just watched my wife cheat on me, and somehow you're still the most disappointing thing I've seen today."

"Jim," Jane said, looking like a woman about to argue that gravity was just a social construct and Marc's dick had fallen into Linda by accident. "What if a Sports Illustrated's swimsuit model picked you, and you couldn't say no?"

"Jane, I'm going to treat that as a sincere question, which is generous, because it's about as logical as asking what if a bear picked me for the debate team. The honest answer is yes, I'd be tempted. I'd also say no, because I have a wife. Imagine that. Making a wedding vow and keeping it. I understand it's a revolutionary concept with you fucking shitheads."

Phil, a man whose head sits on his shoulders like a mailbox on a fence post, said, "Come on, Jim, it's Marc LaValliere."

"I know who he is, Phil. He's the guy whose face looks like it was designed by a committee that lost the specs and approved it anyway. I assume the real appeal is that his shoulders have their own weather system. Congratulations to all of you for supporting a man whose primary achievement is being tall and playing a game reasonably well."

Silence.

I put a ten on the table. "That covers my tab. Linda pays for herself with whatever that asshole tips her at the end of the evening."

The hotel room had two Godiva chocolates on the pillows, a very nice view of a parking structure, and a blue lace bra and panty set on the bed that had clearly cost more than my first car. I sat on the edge of the mattress and took stock of the evening.

Wife: gone.

Friends: unhelpful.

Chocolates: present.

I ate both chocolates, as a matter of principle. Because fuck that bitch.

"Hello, Emma," I said to the ceiling, since the ceiling and I were now on the same team. "Hello, Tommy. Daddy would like to explain that the lady who launched you out of her vagina and tucks you in at night has been called away on urgent football penis business."

I thought about calling a lawyer, then remembered that L. W. would be asleep, and that waking a retired attorney at midnight is how you get a three hour lecture about the Magna Carta. I thought about calling Linda, and remembered that her phone was probably in a drawer next to a man whose entire personality was a college highlight reel.

The front desk clerk, a cheerful twenty something with the posture of a question mark, asked if everything was to our liking when I checked out at one in the morning.

"The room was spectacular," I said. "The chocolates were good. The marriage was returned for store credit."

She nodded sympathetically, sliding me an individually wrapped "Wint-O-Green" life saver, which told me she'd heard worse. It's a comfort to know that somewhere out there, a hotel clerk has seen the full range of human disaster and still offers a mint.

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I heard the car in the driveway, and then the key in the lock. I stayed in my armchair in the dark. The room was already set up. The lights were off, curtains drawn, one clipboard on my knee. I'd spent a productive morning.

The front door opened.

"Jim? I'm home!"

She said it exactly the way she says it after a Costco run. A grocery bag rustled. A light switched on, and I squinted like a mole being served a subpoena.

Linda stood there in the blue dress, hair perfect, a paper bakery bag in one hand and a smile on her face that was at least 70 percent structural.

"I stopped for bagels," she said. "They had the everything ones you like."

"Of course you did," I said. "A woman returning from a night of national television adjacent infidelity, and her first stop is the bread doughnut shop. That isn't a walk of shame. That's a morning routine with a theme."

"Jim-"

"No, please, I'm moved. I've seen soldiers come home from war less prepared. You didn't even change the dress. Now, THAT'S commitment to the bit."

She set the bag on the table with the care of someone defusing a grenade. "It's still just me, Jim. The same old me. Nothing has changed."

"Linda, I hate to be the one to point this out, but you have one of those faces where the truth shows up before you do. You look like a golden retriever who's eaten a couch and is trying to convince me that it never existed."

"I took a shower before I came home."

"A shower. Good. That's step one of a thirty step process, and I'm glad to see you didn't skip it. God forbid we have any stray sperm contaminating your girly flaps," I held up the clipboard. "Which brings me to the reason I'm sitting in the dark like a Bond villain."

"Jim, what is that?"

"It's a scorecard."

"A... scorecard?"

"Technically a probationary evaluation. Your marriage is now a figure skating competition. Each category is scored from one to ten. Categories include Remorse, Eye Contact, Plausibility of Excuses, and Presentation, which I believe you've already addressed by wearing the dress that started the whole thing."

Linda stared. "You can't be serious."

"I'm a risk assessor, Linda. I've signed off on nuclear plants with fewer red flags than you." I clicked my pen. "So far you've earned a six for the bagels, because it was a bold choice and nobody else would have tried it. You lost points for 'it's just me, the same old me,' which was frankly lazy. You've said it twice. The audience is getting restless."

"What audience?"

"Right now it's me and the Ficus. He's judging harder than I am."

It sat on the window sill next to the sofa, which in our house is where Linda sits when she's about to be reasonable at someone. "Jim, I know you're hurt. I want to talk about it, honestly and completely, but I can't if you're making jokes."

"I'm not making jokes. I'm scoring. Jokes are what Dee made at the table after she lied to me with a straight face. Which, by the way, was a masterclass in how to look sincere while wearing a face like a damp oven mitt."

"Dee is a good friend."

"Dee is a pleasant background character who takes the cover story seriously. She means well... like a very considerate house fire."

Linda took a breath, the long, patient kind she uses on the kids. "What do I have to do to start fixing this?"

I looked down at the clipboard.

"I'm glad you asked. First, there'll be a series of challenges. Think of it as a decathlon, except at the end you don't get a medal. You get me. Which, if you ask the Ficus, is a worse prize."

"Challenges?"

"You'll find out. For now, the clipboard says you're at a four out of ten. Everything else is incomplete pending performance evaluation."

"A four?" She sounded wounded. "Jim, I came home. Doesn't that count for something?"

"It counts for exactly what a pilot gets for landing the plane after flying it into a mountain. Congratulations on the landing. Let's talk about the mountain."

Something on the coffee table buzzed. We both looked. Her phone, face-up, lit with an unfamiliar number. I hit the answer button before Linda could snatch up the phone. I put it on speaker.

"Linda? Linda are you ok? I just wanted to check on-". Beep. I hung up the phone. I added the number to her contacts under the name "Asshole". I set down the phone and stared at her silently. No expression on my face.

She went pale. I slowly lifted my pen.

"Don't," Linda whispered.

"Too late. That's a minus two for contact list management."

The phone buzzed twice more, then went quiet. A moment later it chimed with the sound of a new voicemail.

"Put it on speaker," I said.

"Jim, no."

"Linda, I've sat through a quarterly compliance review for a chemical plant. I can survive a voicemail." I clicked my pen. "It's also graded. Think of it as the talent portion."

She pressed the button with the nervous expression of a woman defusing a bomb with her face.

"Hey, Linda. It's Marc. LaValliere. Marc from last night. And this morning. Anyway, hi." There was a long, wet pause, like a sofa being dragged across a gravel driveway. "I just wanted to say I had an amazing time, and I think we really connected. On a spiritual level. My therapist says I should tell people how I feel, and I feel like you ghosted me in my own driveway. Which is okay! I'm processing. Also I got us a dog. His name is Touchdown. Call me."

The message ended. The house was very quiet, and somewhere in the walls the refrigerator hummed like it was embarrassed for all of us.

"Well," I said. "That's the first time a voicemail has made me want to apologize to a dog."

"Jim-"

I started laughing. Like really genuinely laughing.

"He bought a dog, Linda! HAHAHA! In the time it takes most men to find their keys, he bought a dog. I'd say that's the most decisive thing he's done since the Pro Bowl, except he named it Touchdown, so I assume he used his entire word budget for the year."

"I didn't give him my number," Linda said faintly.

"You didn't have to. A horny galoot built like a refrigerator can find a phone number the way a bloodhound finds a ham sandwich." I wrote something on the clipboard. "I'm giving you two points back for visible horror. The only way to improve it would be to faint or have 'the vapors'."

"That isn't funny."

"It's a little funny. But, I'm trying to be accurate. A man who gets a dog before a second date has the emotional stability of a dropped souffle." I tapped the pen.

Then the phone buzzed again.

"Hey, it's me again. I realize I sounded a little intense. Touchdown's a rescue. I don't want you to think I'm a rescue kind of guy. I mean, I am, but not in a clingy way. Call me."

"Jim." said Linda, a look of growing horror on her face.

"I've seen a racoon in a dumpster with better boundaries. Congratulations, Linda, on letting 'Terminator with a boner' into our fucking lives."

By the time Mrs. Porter dropped off the kids at three, Linda had deleted nine voicemails and received one text consisting entirely of a photo of a beagle in a tiny jersey. I had filed the whole thing under Evidence.

Emma and Tommy tore through the door like a very small, very loud hurricane.

"Daddy! Mommy! Mrs. Porter let us watch Frozen!"

"GET OUT OF TOWN!" I exclaimed loudly. "FROZEN?? THE DISNEY MOVIE?"

Linda scooped up Tommy, who immediately began explaining the plot to her as though she'd never seen it. She was smiling. It was a good smile. A little tight at the edges, like a window that had been painted shut.

"Mommy, why are you wearing your party dress?"

"Because Mommy likes to feel pretty, sweetheart."

"Mommy had a late night," I added helpfully. "Very late. It involved a lot of pee pee cardio."

She shot me a look that could've stripped paint.

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That night, after the kids were put to bed, Linda came to me with a pile of handwritten pages.

"I've tried to think about the questions you would have, and the things that are troubling you, and answer them as honestly and completely as I can. I know it will hurt you to read some of this, and I cried as I wrote it. God, this was hard. I knew I could soften some of the hurt by lying to you, or by hiding things, but we need to get the truth out into the open. I promise that every word I've written, and every word I will speak to you, is the plain truth, however it makes me look. I will not lie to you, for any reason."

Tentatively, almost shyly, she put the papers into my hand.

I looked at her incredulously. Then, I smirked and started reading.

"Dear Jim,

"Yesterday afternoon when you left, you said that you didn't know what I meant when I said that I love you. I was stunned. I didn't think you could possibly have meant that the way you said it, after we've loved each other for so long. I think you meant that if I loved you like you thought I did, I couldn't have done what I did Friday night. I would have agreed with you. Five minutes before Marc came to our table, one minute before, if you'd asked me whether I could cheat on you with anyone, let alone walk out on you that very night, I'd have laughed and told you there was no way that would ever happen. And then it did.

I looked at her. Still smirking, I folded the pages, and set them on the coffee table like a man declining a timeshare presentation.

"Linda."

"Jim, I tried to be honest..."

"What are we? Girlfriends? Is this where I make tea and we compare notes on your hot date with Mr. Dreamboat?"

She actually looked hurt. I admired the commitment.

"Let me explain how this works. The man you married, who went to the club with you, who ate the wings, who wore the good shirt? He's stone fucking dead. You killed him. It was very quick and I'm told he didn't suffer. What you have now is a new guy. Let's call him James."

"Jim-"

"James doesn't like you. James is reviewing his options. James is looking at a life as a divorced man with every other weekend and a studio apartment that smells like mold and feet, and frankly the apartment is looking better every minute. If Emma and Tommy weren't in the picture, you'd be so gone they'd be searching for you in the god damn Bermuda Triangle."

"I just wanted-"

"I know what you wanted. You wanted to hand me a seven page apology and have me weep into it. James doesn't weep. James has a clipboard." I tapped the cover of the clipboard. "If you want a shot at saving this zombie shitshow of a marriage, you can start by shitting me Tiffany diamonds. Until then, I'll take the letter under advisement."

I made some marks on the clipboard.

"Three out of ten," I said. "Points for effort. Minus seven for length."

I photographed each page of that long ass letter and texted the images to the family group chat. Linda spent a large portion of the rest of the evening fielding calls from her family. Lots of shouting, crying, and gnashing of teeth. I slept like a fucking baby.

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Yet another god damn voicemail.

"Hey Linda, it's Marc. LaValliere. Again. I know you said stop calling, but I figured that was your 'playing hard to get' voice. My therapist says I should name my feelings, and my feeling is that you ghosted me after the best night of my life, which, no pressure. Did I mention that I bought us a dog? I bought us a dog. Call me."

I called out for Linda.

"Your boyfriend called. His voicemail has a vision board."

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L. W.'s office occupied the second floor of a brick building downtown, above a dry cleaner and below a dentist, which he claimed gave him a complete cross-section of human suffering within a single stairwell. He was 79, had a face like a walnut that had passed the bar exam, and a voice you could use to strip paint off a boat. He'd been my grandfather's friend, then my father's lawyer, and was now technically my uncle through a family tree so tangled that nobody under sixty could explain it without a whiteboard and a cup of coffee with a side of methamphetamine.

I found him behind a desk the size of a pool table, doing a crossword in pen. At 79, he had apparently decided that even pencils were for people who lacked conviction.

"Jim," he said, without looking up. "7 letters. 'Man who lets a football player poach his wife'."

"Cuckold. Fuck, you're a harsh old man. How the hell did you find out?"

"Ruth Ann from my bridge club. She got a copy of Linda's scanned letter. So did Betty from ballroom dancing. Pearl from Bible study got one, too. Pearl thought you were very brave."

"Pearl also thinks the Earth is 6000 years old, so I wouldn't get carried away."

"Great idea sending it to everyone, by the way. Very mature. Very constructive."

I rolled my eyes and sighed heavily. He filled in a square.

He tapped the chair opposite him.

"Sit down before you fall down. I don't want to do paperwork."

I sat. I'd brought the clipboard, because by then I wasn't sure I could go anywhere without it. I was one bad afternoon away from sleeping with it under my pillow and listing it as my emergency contact.

L. W. glanced at it, then at me. His face performed the complicated little maneuver it did whenever he'd decided not to say something that would make my life worse.

He pointed at the clipboard.

"What's that?"

"My emotional support clipboard."

"Does it have a name?"

"Not one I'm willing to admit to in public."

"Good. You've still got some dignity left."

"Debatable."

"Start at the beginning," he said.

I told him all of it. The club, the restroom, the decoy, the hotel room, and the chocolates. I told him about the letter, and he nodded with understanding at my new name, "James", with the grave respect of a judge receiving evidence that would ruin a man's career and improve his afternoon. I told him about the clipboard.

"Have you been sleeping?"

"Like a baby."

He looked up.

"A baby?"

"A baby wakes up every three hours and screams. That pretty much sums it up for me."

He studied me for a while, the way a doctor studies an X-ray when he's already decided the patient is going to have a very expensive Tuesday.

"You want to know your options in a divorce," he said at last. "They're poor. For both of you."

"Lay it on me, old man. I've had worse news from people with less interesting furniture."

"You both work and earn roughly the same. So you'll probably pay little in alimony and a good deal in child support. She'll get primary custody, which means she'll get the house, move her new boyfriend in, and you'll still pay roughly half the mortgage on a place you don't live in while some asshole rails your wife in your bed."

He paused.

"Presumably he'll use your side. Athletes need the extra room."

"Comforting."

"Your savings get split. You'll rent a small apartment with a smaller refrigerator. You'll see Emma and Tommy on weekends and spend every Sunday evening watching them wave from a car."

"That's a pleasant picture."

"It's an accurate one. I'm not a travel agent."

He folded his hands on the desk.

"The system isn't built to punish her, Jim. It's built so everyone leaves a little poorer and a lot angrier. Nobody wins, except the lawyers. We do very well."

"Oh, joy. Finally, some good news."

"I can draw up the papers tonight if you want. That's my job, and I'd do it well."

"But?"

"But I'm also your family. As family, I won't file them for 90 days. A cooling off period, if you will."

"I'm pretty cool."

"You've been marinating. There's a difference."

"I've been scoring."

"You've been marinating with an emotional support clipboard. Give it 90 days, son."

He leaned back. His chair creaked like it was filing a complaint.

"Let me ask you something, and don't answer right away. When this started, what did you want?"

"For it not to have happened."

"Besides that."

I thought about it. The radiator hissed. Somewhere below us, a dental drill whined. Even the building seemed to be getting more work done on its teeth than I was getting done on my life.

"I wanted my kids to be okay," I said. "That's what I want. I don't know what I want about Linda. I think I want to hurt her. I think I want her to feel it. What I felt. And then I think I want her to hold me, and I hate that I want that, because it's the same woman who..."

I stopped.

"I don't have a clean answer."

"Good," said L. W. "Clean answers in this situation are for sociopaths and people selling self help books."

He hummed a few bars of something old and bouncy, a tune about a daring young man on the flying trapeze, then stopped.

"Your great grandfather used to say that a man's marriage is the only contract he signs without reading it. Every other deal you've ever made has a termination clause. Yours says 'until death,' and the only thing it guarantees is that both parties meant it on the day they signed."

"So what are you saying?"

"I'm saying you need something to live for besides her. Find it, and let it steer."

He looked at me over his glasses.

"For you, I suspect they're already asleep upstairs in a Frozen nightgown and Bluey pajamas."

That one landed.

I looked at the clipboard, and for the first time all week, I didn't have a joke.

I fucking hate Bluey and Elsa, though.

Neither of us said anything for a while. L. W. picked up his pen, filled in two more squares, and said, almost to himself:

"February the 29th."

"What about it?"

"Interesting date. Only exists one year in four." He tilted the crossword toward the light. "A date that barely exists. The calendar slips it in when nobody's looking to make the arithmetic work. Then it vanishes again. I've always thought there's something forgiving about it."

"Forgiving."

"It's the one day on the calendar that doesn't count against you."

He glanced up over his glasses. His expression gave me nothing.

"I'm only making conversation."

"You never make conversation."

"I'm 79. I gotta start new habits or I'll die."

I stood to go. At the door, he spoke again, his voice so neutral it might have been a weather report.

"You'll want a contract, Jim. Not a divorce. A contract. I mean it kindly. People who trust each other don't need one, and you aren't there yet. But a contract is a way of being honest about what you're willing to put up with, what you aren't, and what the other party owes you for it. It's a very good tool for people who are still in the room."

"Is that your recommendation?"

"I don't make recommendations. I recommend you not get into this fix in the first place, but apparently nobody consults me until the house is on fire."

He tapped his crossword.

"7 letters. Husband who learns something."

"Dumbass."

"Indeed. But we have 90 days to find out that for sure, don't we?"

He smiled for the first time, a small, dry, deeply annoying smile.

"One more thing," L. W. said. He tapped a thick manila folder on the corner of his desk. The tab said ELLEN in block capitals. "A client of mine. I'd like you to know about her."

"Why would I need to know about your clients?"

"Because she's an escort."

I stared at him. "You have a call girl as a client."

"A very high end one. Last spring I drafted a will for a man who left his entire estate to a cockatoo. Ellen is the more conventional case."

"Why does a call girl need a lawyer?"

"Because it's the most heavily documented industry I've ever practiced in. Contracts, nondisclosure agreements, quarterly taxes, and a former client who stiffed her on a $7000 invoice after a charity gala. She's tidier than most banks. She also wants out. She's starting a consulting firm, and I'm drafting the paperwork."

"Consulting in what?"

"Risk."

I laughed so hard I had to grab the desk. "Oh my God. You're a customer. 79 years old and still in the game."

"At 79 I can't get out of a chair without a motion and a second. I've never laid a finger on her. The only thing that has ever passed between us is a retainer agreement."

"That's exactly what a customer would say."

"It's also exactly what a lawyer would say. Notice how the two overlap." He folded his hands. "She's younger than Linda and better looking than anyone you've ever shared a room with, and I say that as someone who's fond of your wife."

"Thank you. I'll add that to the file."

"I mention it because you could use some wind in your sails. A dinner. Nothing more. You remember that you're allowed to be looked at, or you walk her past Linda and watch the jealousy arrive right on time."

"That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. I'm not cheating on my wife to make a point about my wife cheating on me. That's like setting your house on fire to protest arson."

"I said nothing about cheating. I said dinner."

"I'm a married man. I keep my promises. That's the whole problem, remember?"

"Is it." He smiled, small and dry. "Keep that in mind."

"Go home, Jim. Ponder my words."

I turned around.

"Did you just actually tell me to 'ponder my words'? What are you, a 17th century playwright?"

"Go kiss your kids for me, you prick," L. W. said, laughing.

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The first trial took place the following Friday evening, at the same Wendy's where Linda and I had our first date, now nine years and two children later. I'd picked it deliberately. The restaurant had been through a remodel, but the booths still had that faint, sticky, faintly nostalgic smell of shared fries and mild regret.

"Trial One," I announced, sliding into our booth with a tray of nuggets, two bacon cheeseburgers, and baconator fries. "The Wendy's Date. A callback, a test of sentiment, and an opportunity for you to prove you remember the man you chose for your life."

"Jim, you can't be serious."

"I'm a professional. I took a vacation day to prepare." I spread out the clipboard. "Scoring will be based on presentation, authenticity, and ability to maintain eye contact while eating a Frosty. Please begin."

Linda looked down at her tray. She took a nugget. She looked at me.

"I love you," she said, in the tone of someone ordering the soup.

"Score: five. Delivery was flat, and the nugget was a coward's choice."

"It's a chicken nugget!"

"It's a symbol, Linda. This is a performance, not a snack." I took a nugget of my own. "Try again, with feeling."

She took a breath and put her hand over mine. "Jim," she said softly. "I know this has been hard. And I want you to know that nothing, absolutely nothing, will ever come between us again."

"Score: seven. Strong open, but you used the word nothing three times. Overkill."

Then, because the universe has a sense of humor, the drive thru speaker beside our booth crackled to life.

"Welcome to Wendy's! Can I take your order?"

"Hi!" a voice answered, and Linda went rigid. "Yeah, hi. I'd like a number three, but with no onions. And a Frosty. Chocolate. For my girlfriend."

I looked at the window. A very large man in an extremely small sports car was leaning out toward the speaker with the desperate sincerity of a lost Labrador. On his passenger seat, strapped in with a seatbelt, sat a beagle in a tiny football jersey.

"Linda," I said gently. "I believe your boyfriend is here."

"He is not my boyfriend."

"He's got a dog. In a jersey. And he's ordering your Frosty. I'd say that's boyfriend behavior with a side of unsolicited commitment."

The window attendant, a teenager with the thousand yard stare of someone who's seen all of human nature in a drive thru, handed Marc a chocolate Frosty. He took it with both hands and parked in a handicapped spot.

Marc did not get out of the car so much as unfold from it, like a folding table being deployed by an enthusiastic toddler. He stood in the parking lot with the Frosty held out in front of him like a diplomatic gift.

"Linda," he said. "Hi."

"Marc," said Linda, in the exact tone she uses on telemarketers and the kids' soccer coach.

"I know you said you needed space. But I thought, what's more spacious than a Wendy's parking lot?"

"That's not what space means," I said.

He turned to me with the baffled friendliness of a man meeting his own reflection in a spoon. Up close, Marc LaValliere had a jaw you could have used to level a deck and a pair of eyes the color of wet cement. His forehead was roughly the size of a drive-in movie screen, and about as busy.

"Oh, hey. You must be the husband."

"And you must be the fire code violation."

"Ha! Good one." He laughed with great sincerity and no idea why. "Anyway, I brought a Frosty. Chocolate. Your favorite, Linda. I remembered."

"It's not my favorite," Linda said. "I'm a vanilla person."

"But you ordered chocolate at the club."

"That was a daiquiri, Marc. It was brown because of the rum."

Marc's face went through a series of expressions, like a screensaver loading. "Oh," he said finally. "I'll make a note."

"Don't," we said together and then stared at each other, surprised.

Something small and brown squirmed out of the passenger window of the sports car, hit the pavement, and came toward us at a dead run, wearing a tiny football jersey with LAVALLIERE 87 across the back. It squirmed through the restaurant's door while someone else was leaving. It was a beagle. It had the stubby legs of a barstool and the ears of a pair of leather mittens, and it moved with such joy that I briefly forgot I was in the middle of a shit hurricane.

"Touchdown!" Marc cried. "Heel!"

Touchdown did not heel. Touchdown made a beeline for me, sniffed my ankle with the focus of an airport inspector, and then sat on my foot with the air of a dog who'd made a career decision.

"He likes you," Marc said, wounded.

"He has taste," I said. "Good boy. Sit. Oh, you already did. Excellent. You're better at this than your owner."

Linda's mouth twitched. She smothered it with a very serious frown, which in our marriage is the equivalent of waving a white flag.

"Marc," she said, in the tone of a woman who's read the full terms and conditions and has decided to enforce them, "I need to be very clear. I had a lovely time. That's the end of my yelp review. I'm married. This is my husband. We have two children and a mortgage. You shouldn't be here, and you shouldn't be calling."

"But Linda." Marc's lower lip came out. I would not have believed it was possible for a lip to do that on a man his size, but it happened, and I think we all felt it in our chests. "We have something special."

"We had an evening."

"And a morning."

"And a morning," she conceded, sighing heavily with the weary grace of a lawyer entering a regrettable fact into the record. "That's all. That was it."

"But I told my teammates about you."

"Please don't tell your teammates about me."

"I told my mom."

"Marc."

"She wants to meet you. She's got a casserole."

Linda started to say something, but I interrupted.

"Hold on," I held up my hand at her.

"Marc," I started. "I want to ask you a question and I want you to tell me the truth and don't spare my feelings."

Linda seemed to freeze, and stared at me shaking.

"Marc," I continued. "What kind of casserole?"

Something seemed to break in Marc and Linda. I could practically smell the question marks coming off of their heads.

"Wha-What?" asked Linda.

"Uhhhhh," said Marc, recalibrating. "Um... it's... uh... cheeseburger macaroni casserole?"

"Hot damn! Bring that shit on over ASAP!" I said enthusiastically.

I leaned over to Linda. "I'd like to note for the clipboard that the casserole is the first thing he's said that has a chance of going somewhere."

"Jim, not now."

"Touchdown ate a nugget off the pavement," I added, "so I'd like it on the record that this is the most competent member of your admirers."

Touchdown, hearing his name, wagged his entire back half and tried to climb my leg. I picked him up. He settled against my chest, gave one long, contented sigh, and pointed his nose at Marc with the weary dignity of a dog who'd been through a lot of cars.

"Traitor," Marc muttered.

"He's not a traitor," I said. "He's a conscientious objector."

"Marc," Linda tried again, and I could hear her patience going thin, like a coat sleeve in a rosebush. "I don't know how else to say this. I'm not leaving my family. Not for you, not for a dog, and not for a casserole. I need you to stop calling and stop showing up. I'd like that to be the last conversation we have."

"But what if I change?"

"Into what?"

"Into... I don't know. Someone who's a better fit?" He looked genuinely stricken. "I could learn to like vanilla."

There was a long pause. A cold wind blew a Wendy's napkin across the lot like tumbleweed in a very bland Western.

"Marc," I said, not unkindly, "you're a nice guy in the way a golden retriever is a nice guy. Big, warm, and completely unaware of the damage you've caused. You can't change into a better fit, because the problem isn't the fit. The problem is that she lives here, and you don't."

"Huh," said Marc, who had apparently never been told that before. He thought about it for a while. Something behind his eyes seemed to switch on, like a pilot light in a very old stove.

"Can I at least have Touchdown back?"

I looked down at the beagle. Touchdown looked up at me. In the long, quiet exchange that followed, I believe we reached an understanding.

"I'll tell you what," I said. "He can stay with us for the weekend. Call it a trial separation. It'll be good for him. And for you."

"Jim!" Linda hissed.

"What? He's a beagle, Linda. He's practically a Roomba with excess saliva."

Marc's face crumpled. "Okay," he said, and handed over the leash with a hand that shook a little. "He likes the salmon flavored treats. And he sleeps on the left side."

"Of course he does," I said. "Everyone does. It's a known preference of the species."

Marc got back in his car, which started on the fourth try, and drove away at about eleven miles an hour. It was the most dignified thing I'd seen him do.

Linda watched him go. She exhaled, long and slow, then turned to me.

"You took his dog."

"He took my wife. Frankly, I think I got the better deal."

Linda looked annoyed.

"That big goofball is going to cry."

"Linda, I'm fairly sure he's already crying. And I'd say this is a net improvement. He had a ten minute conversation with his own ambitions and left with a plan. Meanwhile, I have a cute dog, a clipboard, an incoming casserole, and a Frosty. I'd say I came out ahead."

She stared at me. Then she started to laugh. It was a real laugh, the first one I'd heard from her since the night in question, and it turned into the kind of laugh that makes you hold onto a table. She put a hand over her mouth.

"I'm still very angry at you," she said finally, wiping her eyes.

"I'd hope so. It's the only thing keeping this marriage honest. And the anger is mutual, by the way."

I looked down at the clipboard. "Score for the Wendy's date: eight out of ten. Points off for the unscheduled boyfriend. Points added for handling him like a woman who's done this before."

"I haven't done this before."

"I know. It's what makes it so impressive."

Touchdown sneezed. We both looked down at him. He wagged his tail once, with the authority of a small dog who has decided he's staying.

Linda sighed. "We're keeping the dog, aren't we?"

"For the weekend," I said. "I'm not a monster. Also, I'd like to note that Emma is going to lose her shit."

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By Saturday morning, Touchdown had established that he was a dog who lived in our house and that the house had no say in the matter.

Emma had named him "Sir Touchdown, Duke of Beagleton" within eleven minutes and appointed herself his royal handler. Tommy followed the beagle around the kitchen at knee height, narrating his movements in the hushed voice of a nature documentary.

I came downstairs at 6:40AM to the sound of a small, deeply private cough.

"Linda," I said. "I believe Touchdown is having a feelings."

She was already at the sink, still in her robe, holding a mug of coffee in the manner of a woman who'd been awake for eleven days. We both looked down. In the middle of our kitchen floor, in a puddle roughly the size of a pizza, sat a beagle shaped regret. It was pale orange and gleaming, and it had chunks.

"Is that..."

"Salmon flavored treats," I said. "It's a lot of salmon flavored treats. Marc told us his feeding schedule, and I'm now fairly sure that schedule was 'whenever the dog looks at me.'"

Touchdown, sitting beside the puddle, gave a long sigh that seemed to say I told him, then wandered off to find another rug.

"You're sharing the dog house with him, so you clean it up," I stated in my non-negotiable voice.

"Tiffany diamonds," she muttered.

Linda put down her coffee. She did not speak. She took a roll of paper towels from under the sink, and a bottle of spray, and a pair of yellow rubber gloves she kept for oven cleaning, and she got down on her hands and knees and began to clean.

I watched for a respectful interval.

"For the clipboard," I said, "that's a nine for stoicism."

"Jim."

"I'm only saying. Most people would've had a meltdown. You've got the quiet competence of a woman who's been preparing for this her entire life."

"I swear to God, I will throw this paper towel at you."

"Ten for threat display."

By 10AM the count was four. Four puddles, two piles, and one incident under the dining table I'm still not prepared to discuss. We'd learned that Touchdown ate everything. He ate crayons, a sock, a single Lego, and what I'm sure was part of a library book. He had the digestive system of a garbage truck and the table manners of a norseman.

"How the fuck did he eat a crayon and a Lego? He hasn't been here long enough to eat that and for it to go through his digestive tract. Does Marc...? Did you notice a lot of coloring books and Lego sets at Marc's place while he was banging you like a two dollar whore?"

Linda looked at me like she was about to cave my head in with a frying pan.

"I didn't get the free tour, asshole!" she spat out and moved to go finish breakfast.

The final blow came at 11:15, when he stood in the hallway, looked Linda dead in the eye, and produced something large and unmistakable on the new runner rug.

Linda stood very still. Then she walked to the kitchen, picked up her phone, and dialed.

"Jim," she said, calmly, "I'd like you to watch the kids for a minute."

"Absolutely. Should I stand back or take notes?"

"Notes."

The phone rang twice.

"Hello?" Marc's voice came through, hopeful and breathless. "Linda? Hi! Is that you? I can't believe you called. I was just thinking about-"

"Marc."

"Yes?"

"What did you feed this dog?"

A pause. "What do you mean?"

"I mean the dog. Touchdown. What do you give him to eat?"

"Well, I... he gets his treats. And whatever I'm having. Sometimes pizza. Sometimes a protein shake. He loves protein shakes."

"A protein shake."

"The chocolate ones... but I'm switching to vanilla!"

"Marc," said Linda, and her voice went up half a step, like a train beginning to slow, "this dog has thrown up on my kitchen floor three times this morning. He has left four piles of shit in places where I have children who walk barefoot. One of them was inside a shoe. A shoe, Marc. I've been on my knees since dawn with a pair of oven gloves, and I've had to explain to a 6 year old why the royal beagle needs to be taken to the vet. You gave this animal a god damn protein shake?!"

There was a long, wounded silence.

"I'm sorry," Marc said finally, in a very small voice. "I didn't know. Nobody ever told me."

"You didn't think to look it up? Google is right there! It's on your god damn smart phone, Marc!"

"I thought love was enough."

"Love is not enough, Marc! It's not enough for a dog and it's not enough for a... a... whatever this is! You have to feed them properly! Real dog food! At regular times! In amounts that don't turn the living room into a fucking crime scene!"

"I'm so sorry, Linda." His voice cracked. "I'm a terrible dog dad. I knew it. I knew I wasn't ready. My therapist said I should start with a plant."

"Your therapist is right."

"I killed the plant."

Linda pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead. I'd never seen a woman so tired of a man she'd had so little to do with. "Marc. I'm going to say this once, kindly. Please stop sending voicemails. Please stop sending texts. Please stop sending photographs of the dog in clothing. If you want to see him, I'll text you a time, and you can come to the door with the vet records, and we'll talk about it like adults."

"Okay." A sniffle. "I'll be good. I promise. I just... thank you for taking care of him."

"You're welcome."

"Linda?"

"What?"

"I really do think you're special."

"Ugh!" She closed her eyes. "Goodbye, Marc."

She hung up and set the phone down very gently, as though it might go off. Then she turned to me.

"Don't."

"I wasn't going to say anything."

"You were thinking something. I could hear it."

"I was thinking," I said, "that you handled that with the grace of a woman defusing a bomb with a spatula. And that I'd like to officially recommend you for a medal. Perhaps the Order of the Oven Glove."

She picked up a roll of paper towels and threw it at me. I smacked it away like an NBA player denying a jump shot.

The package arrived Monday morning, delivered by a courier in a polo shirt who looked like he was delivering a Faberge egg.

"Package for Linda," he said, handing me a large box wrapped in red ribbon. "Needs a signature."

I signed. The box was heavy, and it smelled like expensive cardboard and something faintly floral. There was a card tucked under the ribbon. I opened it.

Dear Linda and Jim (and Touchdown!),

I've been thinking about what you said, and I want to make it right. I got Touchdown a new bed, since he's probably tired of sleeping on the floor. And I got something for you, Linda. I hope you like it. I had help picking it out.

Love, Marc.

P. S. Please tell Touchdown I miss him.

"Linda!" I called. "Package! It's from the horny terminator!"

She came in from the garage with a bag of recycling and the expression of a woman who'd given up on living a normal life. I handed her the card. She read it, and her face did something complicated.

"Open it," I said. "I'm told these things are better with an audience."

She set the recycling down, and slowly, as though she were opening a letter from the IRS, pulled on the ribbon.

Inside, nested in layers of pink tissue paper, was an orthopedic dog bed the size of a small raft. It was gray memory foam with a cedar-scented cover, and along one edge, embroidered in gold thread, were the words SIR TOUCHDOWN -- DUKE OF BEAGLETON.

"How," I said, "did he know about the Duke thing?"

"Emma told him on the phone," Linda said faintly. "Last night. She says they're friends."

"Of course they are. Nice that you're letting the children get to know your new boyfriend."

"She answered my phone and I had to explain what 'Asshole' meant. Thanks a lot for that, by the way."

Touchdown trotted in, sniffed the bed with the deep skepticism of a customs officer, climbed onto it, turned around three times, and lay down with a sigh that suggested he'd waited his whole life for this moment.

"He likes it," I said.

"He does," Linda agreed. She was smiling, slightly, against her will.

"I'd say that's a point for Marc."

"Don't give him points."

"I'm only keeping score." I peered into the box. "There's something else in here."

"Jim."

"It's wrapped separately."

"Jim, no."

But it was too late. Beneath the dog bed, wrapped in black tissue paper and tied with a silver ribbon, lay a smaller box. I lifted it out. It was very light. It had the look of an object that cost more per ounce than anything else in the house. I handed it to her.

She opened it slowly. Her face went through a range of colors I'd only seen on a mood ring.

Inside, folded with great care, was a scarlet satin and lace bodysuit with an alarming number of straps. Pinned to it was a second card. It read, in neat, careful handwriting: For when you're ready. I asked the lady at the store what you'd like. She said "everyone likes red."

Nobody said anything for several seconds. Touchdown farted gently in his sleep.

"Well," I said at last. "There's a lot to unpack here."

"Jim."

"I just want to say that it's a very thoughtful gift, in a way that makes me deeply uncomfortable. I also want to say that the store lady was wrong. Not everyone likes red. I like red on a firetruck. I'd be neutral on it in this context."

"This is not funny."

"It's a little funny."

She looked at the bodysuit. She looked at the dog bed. She looked at the card, which had a small coffee ring on it, as though he'd written it at a kitchen table and then been too nervous to put the mug down.

"Jim," she said, in the tone of a woman who's reached the end of a very long road, "I'm going to put this in the trash."

"Excellent choice. But it's a La Perla. That's expensive as hell. I bet this little number cost a thousand dollars."

I took a picture of it and did an image lookup and sure enough, there it was. $700.

"Well, we're going to keep the dog bed."

"That's more than fair."

"And then," she said, "I'm going to call Dee, and tell her that if she gave him my address, I'm going to personally feed her a protein shake. Rectally."

"Let me get the blender."

She laughed. It started low, then broke into a helpless wheeze, and she had to sit down on the stairs. I sat next to her. Touchdown wandered over and put his chin on her slipper. She seemed to be laughing and crying at the same time.

"I'm so tired," she said, wiping her eyes.

"I know."

"He's like a very large, very earnest hurricane."

"A hurricane with a dog bed."

"Jim?"

"Yes?"

"I'm sorry about all of it. I really am. I opened the door and let crazy into our lives."

I looked at her for a moment. The sarcasm, which had been steady and reliable all week, took a tiny step back.

"I know," I said. "Fortunately, I've set up a scoring system for exactly this."

She smiled, wearily. "What's my score?"

I checked the clipboard. "Eight for the phone call. Nine for the paper towel throw. Minus two for lingerie, which isn't your fault, but I'm applying it anyway as a matter of policy. Plus one for laughing at the right moment."

"So what's the total?"

"Fourteen," I said. "Out of a possible ten."

"That doesn't make any sense," she sniffed.

"The system is a work in progress. Don't criticize the system."

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The next Friday, after being presented a clean STD panel on the previous Wednesday, I had an idea for the bodysuit. I sent over the kids to a neighbor's house to watch "Frozen" with their kids. Their dad looked at me like "Really? You're doing this to me on a Friday?"

I slipped him a Benjamin for his trouble and handed over a six pack. He brightened up really quick.

I told Linda to put on the bodysuit and make herself up. Because we hadn't had sex since before the fated evening, I was pretty ripe. She had been desperate to have sex with me ever since she came home the morning after the fateful evening in order to "cleanse" herself.

She came out of the bathroom, looking gorgeous and pristine, hair and makeup perfect, like a slutty Disney princess.

She reluctantly shuffled up to me, not looking me in the eye.

"Honey... I..." she started.

"SHUT UP!"

I slapped her. Not hard. Just hard enough to get her attention. She gasped and looked at me with shocked surprise. I grabbed the back of her head and pulled her in for violent tongue kiss. I clenched the back of her head and she yelped as her hair was pulled. I buried my face in her neck and nibbled her neck and breathed into her ear.

"This is how I fuck a slut, Linda," I panted into her ear. "You're a slut aren't you? A fucking slut!"

Linda was horny before all of this. But, for some reason, this seemed to turn her on like she'd never been turned on before.

"Y-Yes!" She gasped, sobbing slightly. "I'm a fucking slut. I'm YOUR fucking slut, baby!"

I shoved my hand in her crotch and it was more soaked than I ever had felt it before. I thought she had wet herself for a minute, but it was too slippery for pee. She moaned as I grabbed her crotch with purpose.

"Fuck me! Fuck me please!" she whined.

I grabbed the top of her bodysuit at the chest with both hands and then yanked it with all my strength. The bodysuit shredded off of her perfect figure in tatters. I threw it on the floor.

I want to stress that we had never made love like this before. Quite frankly, it was hate fucking. I was plunging my cock into her pussy with no regard for anything; and her pussy was sucking me in making slurping noises like I'd never heard before.

I was forcing her head into a pillow with my hand between her shoulder blades as my hips slapped against her sweaty ass doggie style.

"Are you imagining it's him right now, you fucking slut?!" I screamed. "Do you wish it was him fucking you again!"

She seemed to weep and squeal with pleasure at the same time.

"No! It's you! It's always you! It wasn't.... it wasn't as good as this! This is the best! It's the beeeaaaaaaahh!" She came with a convulsive spasm. She had never cum like that before with me.

I flipped her over on her back and plunged my erect dick back into her still soaked pussy.

"LOOK AT ME!" I yelled as I slapped the side of her hip hard, causing her to squeal. "DON'T CLOSE YOUR EYES! LOOK ME IN THE EYE!"

Her eyes, which were partially closed, opened up almost comically wide as she lifted up her head to look at me. She came again. Another convulsive almost seizure like orgasm wracked her body and she threw her head back and screamed incoherently.

I pulled out and grabbed a piece of the ripped bodysuit and came in it. It was the most intense orgasm I can remember having up to that point in my life. I threw my head back laughing evilly, insanely.

Afterwards, I didn't bother with cuddling. Linda was curled up, panting and spasming with little after shocks. I spread out the ripped bodysuit on the floor with the cumstains prominent on it and snapped a photo of it on my phone.

I texted it to Marc's number.

Me: Sorry there, chief. Your gift had a little accident as I was giving your girlfriend a nice deep dicking.

A couple of minutes later, Linda's phone started ringing with the name "Asshole" showing on it. She muted it and went back to whimpering and spasming.

"That... that was incredible!" whispered Linda. "Th-that was the best-"

I couldn't help but agree. I was pretty blown away myself.

Linda's phone rang again. She silenced it again.

"What the hell?" she complained.

"Oh I just sent Marc LaValliere a little memento of our time together."

"Will you stop taunting the horny terminator robot, please," whined Linda. "And do that to me again right now!"

"Don't get too excited, honey," I interrupted. "That was what is referred to online as 'hysterical bonding'. And it doesn't bode very well for our relationship."

Linda started crying softly. I found it hard to care very much. I cried. Not for Linda and not for my marriage or my family. I cried, mourning my sanity in one of the few lucid moments I was having at the time.

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On Saturday morning I opened the minivan's sliding door and stopped.

Every seat was covered in a navy-and-gold football print, fitted like a tailored suit, with LAVALLIERE 87 embroidered across both headrests. The cup holders had been polished. The carpet had been vacuumed in diagonal stripes, like a baseball field. Pinned to the driver's seat was a note:

For the family car! So you'll think of me every time you drive. P. S. I vacuumed.

"Linda," I called. "Come look at the van."

She came out in her robe with a coffee mug and took one look. She made a sound like a teakettle having a religious experience.

"He broke into the minivan."

"He accessed the minivan. With affection." I checked the door handle. "It was unlocked."

"We've always left it unlocked."

"We live in the same zip code as Marc LaValliere. I think the era of the unlocked minivan has ended."

"We lock the minivan," Linda said grimly.

"We lock the minivan," I agreed. "Also, he vacuumed. I want to flag that as somehow worse."

By 10AM Linda had been curled, contoured, and lacquered at our kitchen table by a woman named Bernadette whom I'd hired with the grim determination of a man staging a coup. She'd been in the chair for ninety minutes. She'd said four things during that time, and all of them were "why."

"Why do I need smoky style eye makeup to jump through a hoop?"

"Hoops. Plural. And presentation is thirty percent of the score."

"You made up that percentage."

"I made up all the percentages. It's a living document."

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Cedar Hollow Park, 2PM. It was 41 degrees F, sunny, and full of people who had made unwise decisions about being outdoors in March. A man with a mustache like a push broom was eating a pretzel. A woman with a stroller and a thermos was giving a lecture to a pigeon. Dave stood at the edge of a patch of frozen grass holding three large hoops, two in one hand and one in the other.

"I'm here because Dee made me," he said.

"Noted. You're the Hoop Master."

"I look like a barker at a very sad carnival."

"That's the correct look. Hold it."

"Why hoops?"

"Because I couldn't rent a circus lion."

I climbed onto a picnic table in a cardboard top hat I'd bought at a party store that morning. Touchdown sat below me in a tiny red scarf, wearing the pained dignity of a dog who'd read the contract too late. I'd appointed him as the Romanian Judge. Emma had given him a scoring system. One tail wag for approval, two for enthusiastic approval, and a sneeze meant he'd like to speak to the manager.

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN," I boomed. "FRISBEE ENTHUSIASTS AND PEOPLE SPEED WALKING TO THE BATHROOM. WELCOME TO THE GREATEST SHOW ON A COLD AFTERNOON."

Linda stood at the start line in my old winter trench coat, holding it closed with both fists. Her hair was a glossy fall of waves. Her eyes had the smoky, deliberate look of a woman about to commit a very elegant crime.

"It seems pretty crowded here for a bitterly cold Saturday in early March," observed Linda.

"I put it on the neighborhood forum," I admitted. "Under 'Community Events.' I thought it would be good for attendance."

"I need it known," she said, "that I'm doing this voluntarily."

"NOTED AND ADMIRED."

"And that I'm annoyed."

"ANNOYED, AND ADMIRED."

"And that I know exactly why I got my hair done."

"I wanted a good audience," I said, with great dignity.

She dropped the coat.

The swimsuit was navy, the color of a night sky with high cut legs. The stilettos were black, three inches, and murderous. Linda stood up straight in the pale March sun with her shoulders back and her chin raised and her hair moving in the breeze, and Cedar Hollow Park stopped.

The man with the pretzel stopped chewing. The woman with the stroller stopped lecturing the pigeon. The pigeon, to its credit, did not stop, but I felt it had been duly briefed. A jogger ran into a trash can.

Then, from somewhere behind the pretzel cart, came a long, rising wolf whistle. A second followed, then a third, then a ragged chorus of men who had been walking through a park and had wandered into a miracle.

"SIR," I announced, pointing at the mustache. "THAT'S A MARRIED WOMAN. OGLE RESPECTFULLY."

"I'm going to kill you," Linda said, through her teeth. But I noticed that her back was a little straighter and that one corner of her mouth was fighting an uprising.

Dave raised the first hoop to knee height with the grim reluctance of a man holding a hoop at knee height. He was actively trying not to look at my wife's breasts and ass.

"Put your eyes back into your head, Dave. You're a married man," I said.

Linda took one running step, planted a heel, and sprang.

"OOOOOPA!" I roared.

She cleared it by a full inch, arms out, landing with a click like a closing briefcase. A smattering of applause. Two more whistles. A man in a fishing hat, whose face looked like a baked potato that had lost an argument with a wasp, shouted "ATTA GIRL!"

"TEN FOR COMMITMENT, SEVEN FOR GRACE, FIVE FOR THE MAN IN THE FISHING HAT, WHO'S NOT EVEN ON THE PROGRAM."

"I'm going to kill you," she muttered.

"I'M GOING TO ASSUME THAT'S AN ENDORSEMENT."

By the second hoop, the crowd had doubled. A man in a bike helmet had pulled out his phone. A woman with a stroller leaned over the rail with the rapt attention of a person watching a car accident that happened to be well-lit. A boy of about nine raised a hand and shouted, "Is this a magic trick?"

"IT'S A LIFE LESSON, YOUNG SQUIRE!"

"What's a squire?"

"YOU'RE A SQUIRE!" I said smiling widely. "NOW GO OVER THERE AND SPANK YOURSELF FOR BEING PRECOCIOUS!"

The kid started laughing "You are a weirdo!"

The second hoop went to waist height. Someone had brought a folding chair. A kid on a scooter had stopped to film, and I'd have bet a week's salary the video would be on 4 continents by dinner. Linda bent her knees, squinted, took a breath through her nose, and launched. One heel skidded on the frozen ground, and for half a second her arms windmilled. The whole crowd gasped.

She landed in a half crouch with her arms spread like a gymnast, and the park exploded in whistles and cheers.

The crowd went wild. The man with the pretzel dropped his pretzel. A teenager yelled, "SHE STUCK IT!"

"OOOOOPA!" I screamed. "THAT'S A NINE FROM THE ROMANIAN JUDGE!"

"What Romanian judge?" asked Dave.

"There's always a Romanian judge, Dave," I replied, pointing at Touchdown. "Stop thinking, it's not your strong suit. Just hold the fucking hoop."

Touchdown wagged his tail. Once.

Linda pulled her swimsuit out of her butt and smoothed out the camel toe.

"I had to SHAVE FOR THIS!" she whispered at me but it had the force of a scream.

Dave raised the third hoop to chest height, and his hands were shaking. A hush fell over the park. A hundred and fifty people, give or take a pretzel, leaned forward as one. Linda rolled her shoulders. She looked at the hoop. She looked at me, and I'll swear on whatever you like, her eyes had the cold, bright fire of a woman who'd been wronged and was about to be right about it.

She took three running steps, heels ringing on the frozen grass like castanets, and launched.

It was a perfect jump. It was a jump they'll tell their grandchildren about. For one frozen second she hung there against the pale sky with her arms flung wide, hair streaming, back arched, a dark blue streak of pure defiance. Then she slid through the hoop without touching a thing, landed on both feet with a ringing click, and stood absolutely still with her arms raised.

The park lost its mind.

A roar went up from the crowd, a real, full-throated, stadium-sized roar. Men were screaming. The mustache man dropped his pretzel and didn't notice. A group of joggers formed a spontaneous conga line. Somewhere in the back, a man started to chant, and the chant caught.

"OOOOOPAAA!" someone bellowed.

"OOOOOPAAA!" answered ten more.

"OOOOOOPAAAAAAA!" shouted the whole park, in a rolling, thunderous wave, and I stood on a picnic table in a party-store top hat with tears streaming down my face.

"I have never," I choked out, "been prouder of a hundred strangers."

"Isn't it supposed to be 'alley oop'?" Dave asked, quietly.

"That's basketball, Dave. This is art. And what did I tell you about thinking?"

Linda lowered her arms. She was out of breath and flushed, and her mascara had held up like a pledge. She looked at the cheering crowd, at me, and at the dog, who'd given two wags and what I'd call a respectful nod. She pulled the bottom of the swimsuit out of her cracks again.

"Are you happy?" she called.

"I am THRILLED, Linda!"

"I want that coat."

I started to pass it to her. When she reached for it, I snatched it back and stared at her exasperated face.

"You've... you've earned it." Sarcasm dripping from every word as I passed her the coat. She quickly put it on.

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We drove home in the minivan, with the heater roaring and Touchdown strapped into the back seat. Linda sat in the passenger seat in my winter coat, with her heels in the footwell and her hair still perfect. She glared at the LAVALLIERE 87 headrest with a mixture of dread and loathing.

"I can feel him in the upholstery," she muttered.

"That's just the added lumbar support."

We were merging onto the interstate later when she went rigid.

"Don't look up," she whispered.

I looked up. And I'm glad I did. Because it was glorious.

Above the highway, a hundred feet in the air, stood a billboard the size of a small cathedral. Across the top, in letters you could read from space: LINDA, I LOVE YOU. COME HOME. -- MARC. And below, in a flash blown, merciless closeup was my wife, captured at 12:40AM on the night in question. One eye at half mast, mouth caught mid hiccup, hair like a haystack in a hurricane, the blue dress slipping off one shoulder.

I looked at the photograph. I looked at Linda, who at that moment looked like a magazine cover.

"Well," I said. "That's a helluva before and after."

"Pull over."

I pulled onto the shoulder. Behind us, a silver Maserati lurched to a stop and died with the exhausted resignation of a divorced middle manager. Marc LaValliere climbed out in a trench coat, clutching a bouquet, wearing the expression of a man who'd shown up to his own surprise party and discovered the cake was a restraining order.

Linda got out of the minivan. She stood there seething on the shoulder of the interstate in an open trench coat, her high cut navy swimsuit and three inch heels visible, with her hair perfect and her arms straight down at her sides, fists clenched white, and every car that passed slowed down to look.

Marc stopped. His mouth opened. The bouquet drooped in his hand like a flag at half mast.

"Marc," said Linda, obviously keeping her rage in check. "Take it down."

Marc noticed her made up face and hair and noted the swimsuit in her open trench coat.

"You... you look..."

"I know how I look."

"I mean, you look even better than the photograph up there."

"That is a very low bar, Marc. That photograph looks like I'm entering drug rehab for a month."

"It looks real."

"This is the real me," she said with barely controlled rage, gesturing at herself. "At least today's me had a hairdresser."

I leaned against the minivan and crossed my arms. "I'd like it noted that his vocabulary is a shallow puddle in a linguistic desert."

"Jim, not now." Linda took a breath. She was annoyed, but she wasn't screaming. She said it quietly, the way you'd speak to a man standing on a ledge you'd rather he stayed on. "I'm asking you nicely. It's an unflattering picture of a married woman, on a major highway, near my children's school. I'd like it down as soon as possible. Tonight. I'll pay the cancellation fee."

Marc's lip began to wobble, with the slow grandeur of a glacier splintering. "I thought it was romantic."

"I know you did."

"I wanted you to know I wasn't hiding it."

"That's the most sincere thing you've ever said," said Linda, "and it's also the problem."

"Did you like the seat covers?" Marc asked, brightening. "I installed them myself. It took two hours. I did it in the dark."

"That's breaking and entering," I said.

"The door was open!"

"We'll be locking it from now on," said Linda.

I called L. W. from the roadside, and he listened to my account in a long and thoughtful silence. By 4PM a truck had arrived with a very tall man and a tall ladder, and the billboard came down with the slow, grieving care of a man dismantling a monument. Marc watched from the shoulder with his hands clasped behind him, looking like a golden retriever separated from a tennis ball. Somebody in a passing car yelled "OOOOPA!" at us, and honked.

I looked at my phone.

"Hah! Look, Linda, we went viral!"

There was a short form video called "Hot Girl literally jumps through hoops for her man!"

It was followed by a video from the perspective of a car driving by, showing Marc holding his bouquet and standing with Linda on the side of the interstate and me behind with a huge grin on my face. It was titled "Hoop Jumping Hot Girl Propositioned by NFL Has Been".

That evening I consulted the clipboard, which had by now become less a clipboard than a sacred text.

Linda was replaying the now viral videos repeatedly, like scratching an open wound.

"God! You can see my nipples clearly! I should have worn my silicone nipple covers," her head bowed, shaking disgustedly from side to side. "Why the fuck didn't I wear my silicone nipple covers? WHY?"

I looked at the comments under the video.

Looks like it was cold outside. ROFL!

She's got a built in thermometer! ROFL!

Looks like the weather was really nippy! ROFL!

People around the office are gonna start calling her "nip" now. ROFL

That reminds me. I need to stop chewing the erasers off of my pencils. It's a bad habit. ROFL!

I'm put in mind of my favorite black comedian, Nipsey Russell! ROFL

She threw her phone at my La-Z-Boy and leaned back, covering her eyes with her hands.

"Don't you want to know your score?" I asked gently, trying to stifle laughter.

She looked at me dully.

"Sure."

I perked up with a smile on my face.

"Ten for the first hoop. Nine for the second. Ten for the third, plus two bonus points for the standing ovation, plus one for staying in character at the billboard. Plus three for the shoes. Minus ten for the interloper."

"What's the total?"

"Fifteen," I said. "I'm still working on the scale."

"And the judge?"

I looked at Touchdown, asleep on the Duke of Beagleton bed with one paw twitching.

"Two wags. The highest he's ever given."

Linda leaned her head back on the sofa again and closed her eyes. "Next time," she said, "I'm choosing the trial."

"You don't seem to get the concept I'm going with here, honey."

"That was fucking humiliating!" complained Linda.

I stared at her.

"Oh hey, you know what's EVEN MORE humiliating, Linda?" I looked at her meaningfully.

Linda stared at me for a moment, then deflated, apparently remembering what happened that brought us to this glorious moment.

"Ugh, OK OK"

I went out and locked the minivan, then checked it twice.

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Sunday, Linda was fielding calls from pretty much everyone she ever met. She was very angry at me and we argued. The gist of her side was that even though my humiliation was public, it was not global. I conceded the point but then pointed out that my various orifices are uncontaminated by Heisman trophy winners. She took exception at my usage of the plural "winners" and I pointed out that I haven't been around her continuously 24 hours a day for the duration of our marriage so I had no assurance of that and it devolved from there.

We were in a cold war stalemate when there was a knock at the door. I opened it up and there was Marc LaValliere, a bright golden retriever grin on his face and holding with both hands a disposable foil casserole pan filled with steaming cheese sauce, macaroni, and ground beef.

"Hey! Is Linda here? I brought my mom's-"

"The fuck outta here!" I smacked the bottom of the pan with a lot of force. It flipped end over end to land in the flower bed open side down. I slammed the door in his face.

A few moments later I heard Linda's phone ringing.

"WHAT DID YOU DO NOW, JIM?!" complained Linda loudly. "THE TERMINATOR IS CALLING ME!"

I laughed.

"Who's the 'terminator'?" asked Emma. "What does that mean?"

"Ask your mother," I laughed.

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Parents' Careers Day at Maple Grove Elementary took place in Room 114, a Kindergarten classroom where the walls were covered in construction paper tulips and the furniture had been designed for people who weigh 40 pounds. I wedged myself into a chair built for a large toddler and tried to look like a man who belonged there.

Emma's teacher, Mrs. Abernathy, had been teaching for 30 years. She had the posture of a drill sergeant and the eyes of a woman who could detect a lie at 50 yards. She'd once told me over the phone, in a tone I'd describe as warm sandpaper, that she'd called Linda because she "noticed things." I'd been afraid of her ever since.

"We have three guests today," she announced to 22 6 year olds. "Mr. Pruitt from the fire department, Dr. Okafor the dentist, and Emma's daddy, who does something with risk."

"I assess it," I said. "Professionally. Not in a gambling way."

"Daddy's a worrier," Emma explained to the class. "It's his whole job."

"I'm a professional worrier," I corrected. "There's a difference. Amateur worriers don't get a dental plan."

Linda sat beside me in a chair sized for a kindergarten hamster, with her knees at about shoulder height and her purse in her lap, looking like a woman who'd survived three emergency landings and wasn't prepared for a fourth. Touchdown wasn't allowed in the building, so he sat in the minivan in Tommy's booster seat with a bowl of water and a view of the playground. I'd checked on him twice. He'd given me a look of total disinterest, which I interpreted as inordinately judgmental.

"All right, class," said Mrs. Abernathy. "Mr. Pruitt, would you like to start?"

Mr. Pruitt was a fireman with the build of a refrigerator and the soul of a golden retriever, a man who had clearly spent a career rescuing cats and had never once been tempted to judge them. He talked about smoke detectors. The class was rapt. A boy in the front row asked if he'd ever put out a dragon. He said no, but he was open to it.

Dr. Okafor followed with a plaster model of a mouth and a poster of a tooth with a face on it. The tooth looked terrified, which I felt was appropriate.

Then Mrs. Abernathy said, "And for our final guest, we have a surprise." She looked down at her clipboard. "A very special visitor from the community, invited by one of our students."

Linda went rigid. I felt it through two chair arms.

"Please welcome," said Mrs. Abernathy, "Mr. Marc LaValliere."

The door opened and Marc came in, ducking under the frame with the careful grace of a man who'd been taught as a child that doorways were a personal enemy. He wore a navy blazer over a jersey, jeans, and the expression of a man who'd been practicing in the car. In one hand he held a large foam football. In the other, a bag of what turned out to be 31 identical pencils.

He scanned the room, saw Linda, and lit up like a stadium scoreboard.

"Hi!" he said. "Linda! Jim! I'm so glad you're here!"

"We, on the other hand, aren't," I said, pleasantly.

"Emma invited me," Marc said, to the room at large, in the tone of a man presenting a trophy. "She called me on the phone and said it was a very important career day, and that I could be a guest speaker!"

Every head turned to look at Emma. She sat bolt upright in her tiny chair, hands folded, wearing the radiant, innocent expression of a child who had every intention of seeing this through to the end.

"Emma," Linda said, in a low voice.

"Traitor," I looked at Emma with a cartoonish Disney villain scowl. She smiled and hid her face.

"I thought he'd be good at it," said Emma. "He has a very big job."

"We'll talk about this at home."

"But I did it for education."

Mrs. Abernathy, who missed absolutely nothing, looked from Linda to Marc to me, and her left eyebrow rose a quarter of an inch. It was the most expressive thing I'd ever seen a human face do without moving.

"Mr. LaValliere," she said, "please, come up front. Class, say hello."

"Hello, Mr. LaValliere," 22 voices chanted in the flat monotone of a hostage video.

Marc stood at the front of the room with the foam football. He looked at the children. The children looked at him. Somewhere down the hall, a janitor dropped a bucket.

"Hi, everybody," he said. "I'm Marc. I play football."

"We know," said a small boy in the front row. "My dad has your poster."

"Your dad has good taste." Marc beamed. "So! My job is catching a ball. And then, um, running with it. And sometimes people try to stop me. But I'm very strong. And fast. And I have a lot of feelings about it."

He paused, as though waiting for applause.

"Do you get paid?" asked a girl with pigtails.

"Yes. A lot."

"How much?"

"Um, I'm not sure I'm supposed to say."

"Is it a million dollars?"

"It's... more than that."

"Two million?"

"I don't know what the number is," Marc admitted. "My agent handles it. I just have this debit card and I can buy all the candy and mac and cheese I want."

The children gasped in appreciation.

"But I can't because I'm an athlete and a grown up and grown ups can't eat macaroni and cheese and candy all the time," Marc said sadly.

I leaned over to Linda and whispered, "I'd like it on the record that this is the single most accurate thing he's ever said."

"Jim, I swear, if you laugh, I'll..."

"I'm not laughing. I'm scoring. You're getting major points deducted for him showing up, by the way."

Linda sighed heavily, exasperated.

A boy in the second row raised his hand. His name tag read DEVON, and he had the unblinking focus of a future prosecutor. "Mr. LaValliere. If you're so strong, why do you need a helmet?"

"Because it's... safer?"

"But if you're strong, shouldn't you be okay?"

Marc stared. "I... that's a good question."

"My dad says football players get dain bramage," said Devon.

"That's not entirely... are you trying to say 'brain damage'?"

"Yeah... dain bramage."

"I don't have dain bramage - I mean brain damage."

"Is that why you named your dog Touchdown?"

"How do you know about my dog?"

"Emma told us," said Devon, with the weary patience of a 6 year-old who has been forced to explain the obvious. "He's her pet now. He's a duke."

Marc's face did something complicated, like a pancake caught between two spatulas. "Uh... yeah. I heard about the duke thing."

"Duke of Beagleton," Emma said, with great authority. "I wrote it on a certificate. I also made a flag."

"Emma," said Marc, with real feeling, "that's the nicest thing anyone's ever done for him."

"I know. He's very important."

I leaned toward Linda again. "It seems that my daughter is running a shadow government in this classroom, and I'm starting to think we should be afraid."

"I've been afraid for 6 years," Linda murmured.

"My dad says your best years are behind you and that you play it safe on the backfield trying to wait out your contract and that you're a glorified bench warmer."

"Carl!" exclaimed Mrs. Abernathy.

"What?! Tell your old man to try and block Phil Campbell and Nick Strothers when all 350 pounds 7 feet tall of them are bearing down on your running back!"

"Mr. LaValliere, please!" chided Mrs. Abernathy.

The questions went on. A girl wanted to know what he ate for breakfast. A boy asked if he was married. Marc said no, and then, after a moment, glanced at Linda with an expression so hopeful, so frankly adoring, that I felt every adult in the room lean slightly away from him. A girl in the back asked why he looked sad.

"I'm not sad," said Marc. "I'm just... in love."

The room went quiet.

"With who?" asked Devon.

"With... someone who's here today."

All of the blood in her body rushed to Linda's face.

"nononononono fffffuuuuuhhhhhhhkkkkk" whispered Linda without moving her lips.

"Is it Mrs. Abernathy?"

Mrs. Abernathy, behind her desk, folded her hands and gave him a look so withering it could have stripped the varnish off a bowling alley.

"No," Marc said quickly. "Not her. I mean, she's great! She's a great teacher. But no."

"Is it that hot girl hoop jump lady?"

"Isn't that Emma's mom?" said Devon, who was clearly going to be a detective.

Everyone in the room turned to look at Linda.

I have been married to Linda for nearly ten years. I have seen her face in joy, grief, and the second trimester. I have never seen it do what it did in that moment, which was go perfectly, magnificently blank, like a dry erase board wiped clean by an expert. She sat up straight. She smoothed her skirt. She rose, with a quiet, terrifying grace, and walked to the front of the room.

"Mrs. Abernathy," she said. "Would you mind if I said a few words?"

"Please," said Mrs. Abernathy, who looked like a woman who'd been waiting 30 years for exactly this.

Linda faced the class. She smiled at them, warm and easy, the way she smiles at the kids' friends.

"Hi, everyone. I'm Emma's mom. I'm a project manager. That means I help people finish things, even when they don't want to."

"Do you have a poster?" asked a boy.

"No, but if I did, it would say, Please stop and think before you do something." She glanced at Marc, briefly, politely. "Because that's the job. When I have a plan, I stick to it. When someone's in the way, I tell them kindly. And when someone keeps coming back after I've said no, I put it in writing."

She walked to the whiteboard. She picked up a marker and wrote, in her careful, neat hand: NO MEANS NO.

"Does anyone know what this means?"

"It means no," said Devon.

"That's right. It's the most important word in the English language. It means, I heard you, I considered it, and my answer is no. It doesn't mean 'keep asking until the answer is yes'. It doesn't mean try a billboard. It doesn't mean send a casserole."

"What's a billboard?" asked a girl.

"A very large sign, sweetheart."

"Like for cars?"

"Like for cars. Or for people who haven't learned that no means no."

Marc was standing perfectly still with the foam football pressed to his chest like a security blanket. His lip had begun to wobble. I braced myself.

"Marc," said Linda, gently, in front of 22 witnesses and their parents, "I think it's time you took your pencils and went home."

Silence. A long, awful, wonderful silence. Then Emma, from her seat, clapped. It was a single, dignified clap, and then the whole class joined in, erupting into the kind of applause usually reserved for a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat.

Marc looked around the room. At the children. At Mrs. Abernathy. At me. At Linda.

"I... I understand," he said, and his voice broke on the second word. "I'm sorry, everyone. I'll go."

"Thank you," said Linda.

"Can I leave the pencils?"

"Yes."

"They're monogrammed. They say 'MARC 87.'"

"The class will love them," said Mrs. Abernathy, who had risen to take the bag with the gravity of a general accepting a surrender.

Marc walked to the door. Halfway there, he turned.

"Emma," he said, in a thick voice. "Will you please tell Touchdown I love him?"

"I'll tell him tonight," Emma said. "He'll probably sneeze."

"That's okay," Marc said. "That's how he says it."

He ducked under the door frame, and I swear I heard a sob in the hallway, followed by the long, descending whines of a Maserati failing to start several times.

The class had recess. Linda stood at the whiteboard, still holding the marker, looking slightly amazed at herself. I walked over and stood beside her.

"That," I said, "was magnificent."

"I just said what I meant."

"You wrote no means no on a Kindergarten's whiteboard and got a standing ovation from an entire class of 6 year olds. I've seen CEOs who couldn't do that."

"I wasn't trying to be dramatic."

"You weren't. That's what made it dramatic." I took a step closer. "I'd like to offer an honest evaluation, if I may."

She looked at me, a little warily. "Okay."

"10 out of 10. Full marks. Perfect score."

"Jim..."

"I'm serious. I've been keeping the clipboard for a while, and I hadn't seen the thing I was looking for. And I just saw it. You looked at the man who up until now was everything you wanted in a fling, and you told him no, and you didn't hesitate, and you didn't need me to say it for you. You chose me and you did it yourself. That's what I wanted."

"He was everything I wanted until last Friday when you thoroughly ravaged me. Now I crave you all the god damn time."

"Not in front of the teacher," I hissed theatrically.

She chuckled and then she stared at me. Her eyes, to my enormous alarm, started filling with tears.

"That's the nicest thing you've said to me in 2 weeks."

"I'm trying to keep it professional," I said seriously. "And this is a rare moment of lucidity for me."

"It's not."

"No," I admitted. "It isn't."

From the doorway came a small cough. Mrs. Abernathy stood there, one eyebrow raised, her clipboard under one arm.

"Mr. and Mrs. Mercer," she said. "If you'll permit me. In 30 years of teaching, I've watched a lot of marriages come through this classroom. Some of them survive. Some of them don't. And I've noticed that the ones that do tend to have one thing in common."

"What's that?" Linda asked.

"They can laugh in the worst moment." She looked at us both, and for the first time that day, something that might have been a smile crossed her face. "I'd say you're on the right track."

She turned and walked back to her desk, leaving us standing in a classroom full of tulips.

"She's terrifying," I whispered.

"She's right," said Linda.

"I bet she just stands here looking out the window whenever kids aren't in the classroom. Like she just stands there perfectly still 24 hours a day during the summer and winter breaks. No eating. No sleeping. No peeing or pooping."

"Nah, she powers down and goes and stands in that classroom supply closet over there."

"She's powered by the dismay and heartbreak of little children."

"She moonlights as a dominatrix."

An annoyed voice cleared it's throat.

"You know I can hear you even though you're whispering!" complained Mrs. Abernathy. "My coven is meeting this weekend and we're very vindictive with our spells. Just so you know..."

I honestly didn't know if she was joking. We vacated the classroom.

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Marc did not go home.

I'd like to say that being publicly evicted from a Kindergarten classroom by a woman with a dry erase marker was a learning experience for him. It was, in the sense that he learned about a second parking lot.

At 5:40 on Thursday morning, a saxophone woke me up.

"Linda," I said. "There's a saxophone in the yard. It's got a growth attached to it that's shaped like a Heisman trophy winner."

"That's not funny."

"I agree. It's a very sincere saxophone. Hear that vibrato? That's a man who took lessons."

I looked out the window. On our front lawn, in the gray light, was a 3 man tent, a camp stove, and a boombox the size of a carry on suitcase playing a smooth jazz ballad at the volume usually reserved for tornado warnings. In the middle of it sat Marc LaValliere, cross legged on a sleeping bag, wearing a jersey over thermal underwear and cradling the foam football. He looked like a very large, very sad Eagle Scout. Beside him was a poster board sign: LINDA, I'LL WAIT. Underneath, in smaller letters: (I brought snacks.)

"Linda, go ask dollar store Kenny G what snacks he brought," I urged.

"Will you just stop??" complained Linda, mortified.

"I'd like to point out a double standard," I said. "If I sat on his lawn at dawn with a boombox, SWAT would arrive in nine minutes. When he does it, it's called a gesture. Society has a strangely generous view of men with trapezius muscles."

"No, it's creepy and disturbing in both situations," said Linda fearfully gazing out the window.

Across the street, Mr. Hendricks stood in his bathrobe, filming on his phone. Mrs. Tolliver, next to him, waved at me with the cheerful bloodlust of a woman who'd been waiting years for something like this to happen on our street.

Linda went downstairs, I followed. I'd seen her annoyed, which is a small, tidy emotion she keeps in a drawer. I'd seen her exasperated. I had never seen what came through the front door that morning, barefoot, in a bathrobe, with hair seemingly built by a demented hairdresser with a seizure disorder.

"MARC!"

He leaped up and knocked over the camp stove. "Linda! Good morning! I brought bagels!"

"It is 6AM in the morning. There are children in this house. There is a tent on my lawn. There is a saxophone in my life. I have cleaned dog vomit off my floor with oven gloves. I have been on a billboard looking like a two dollar floozy that lost a bar fight. I received lingerie from a man I know less well than my dentist. I stood in front of 22 kindergartners and wrote NO MEANS NO on a whiteboard, and you are still here!"

"But you said I could see Touchdown..."

"On a SCHEDULE! With SHOT RECORDS!"

"I brought vet records." He held up a folder. "They're laminated."

"I don't want your laminated records! I don't want your smooth jazz! I don't want your casserole or your boombox or your sad bulldog face, which looks like a mastiff that got passed over at the shelter!"

"You said my face was handsome."

"I was drunk and flattered, Marc! That's not a compliment! It's an excuse!"

I had been married to Linda for nine years and had seen her kick exactly one thing, a vending machine, in 2014. She took a short run up, planted her left foot, and I want the record to show the form was textbook. Then she really followed through.

It was a 42 yard field goal, right down the middle. Marc made a sound I can only describe as a kettle learning bad news. He folded like a lawn chair in a hurricane and went down on the grass, clutching the foam football as though it had testicular analgesics inside of it.

"That's the first time," he wheezed, in a voice an octave above its usual range, "anyone's gotten through my line."

"In his defense," I told Mr. Hendricks across the street, "nobody else had her motivation."

In the front window, Touchdown watched with his chin on the sill, barking his deafening beagle bark. His tail wagged twice. The judge approved.

Linda stood panting on the lawn, hair wild, one fist still clenched. She looked at her foot, then at Marc, then at me.

"Did I just do that?"

I lifted up both arms in the universal gesture of an NFL scoring play.

"Ten out of ten," I said. "Technical merit, artistic impression, and a personal best on distance. I'm retiring the clipboard."

The video had four million views by lunch. ESPN ran it on a segment called Sacks of the Week, and the caption read "Mom With a Plan."

Another viral video, "Hot Hoop Girl Responds To NFL Has Been's Proposal of Marriage"

I had to read the comments again.

Our team's kicker is 14 for 29 this season! Does she have an agent? ROFL

Two points! One for each testicle! ROFL!

OW! God Damn It! My nuts are having sympathy pains right now! (praying hands emoji)

The real crime here is his saxophone playing! ROFL!

Flag on the play. Unnecessary roughness. Declined. ROFL!

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People ask me, usually in the cereal aisle, whether I've forgiven Linda. I tell them it's complicated. But I'll say this about the dog.

Marc borrowed my wife for one night. He kept her out till breakfast, returned her slightly used, and had the nerve to call it special. Then I borrowed his dog for one weekend, and I want to be clear that I did exactly the same thing. I took what wasn't mine and kept it far longer than promised. I returned nothing and felt wonderful about it. And frankly, at the time, I thought I got the better deal.

Touchdown is house trained now. He sleeps on the left side, as promised. He's never lied to me. He's never walked out of a club. He has never once been seduced by a man in shoulder pads, and he'll eat anything I drop, which is more than I can say for certain members of my household. The wife came back with a story. The dog came back with a better pedigree. Net result is I'm up one dog and one orthopedic bed, the bed alone being worth more than my first car.

Linda is reading over my shoulder and says to note that she's right here.

I've noted it. It's in the file.

L. W. filed the restraining order that afternoon. The hearing was held before Judge Harriet Stubbs, a woman with the disappointed face of a Bernini sculpture and the patience of a sundial. Marc appeared with a lawyer, an agent, and a bag of pencils to distribute.

Dee took the stand as a character witness. She wore a dress that looked like a Vegas Showgirl's idea of formal.

"Do you know the respondent?" L. W. asked.

"He's a wonderful guy," Dee said. "He's kind, he's generous, he's..."

"Do you know the petitioner?"

"Linda's my best friend."

"And on the night in question, did you help the petitioner leave the club with the respondent?"

"It was one night!"

"Thank you," said L. W. "No further questions."

"Granted," said Judge Stubbs, who hadn't looked up from her papers. "Mr. LaValliere, you will stay five hundred feet from Mrs. Mercer, her children, her residence, and her place of work. As for the beagle..."

"He's mine," said Marc.

"The beagle," said the judge, regarding him with the weariness of a woman who had seen the full range of human folly and could not recall a single bright spot, "has been through enough. Custody is awarded to Mr. Mercer. Next case."

Marc's legally imposed exile lasted four days.

On the fifth morning, a mariachi band appeared on our lawn at 7:15, six men in full costume with trumpets and a guitarron, and at their center, in a sombrero three sizes too small, stood Marc. "I'm not violating the order!" he called, as police cars rolled up. "I'm a third party!" The booking photo showed him in the sombrero, looking like a man who'd been told he'd won a prize and then been informed that the prize was, in fact, a subpoena. The photo went viral. Dee shared it. Dave unfriended her.

His agent bailed him out in 90 minutes. He was a small man with a very expensive watch and the expression of someone who billed by the sigh.

Two weeks later, the team issued a statement thanking Marc for his contributions and wishing him success in a different country entirely. He was traded to Canada, to a team whose home stadium was mostly wind, in a province where the national pastime after hockey is politely apologizing.

Dee called us that night after the news of the trade broke.

"What did you do to Marc LaValliere, you asshole?!" shouted Dee at me through the phone.

"Oh, relax, Dee!" I assured her. "You can still get a piece of that. You just gotta move to Canada. Just think! Free health care and football dick!"

"Oh fuck you, Jim!" yelled Dee. I hung up on her.

Sure enough, Dave and Dee had a very public argument where she drunkenly lamented not spending a night with Marc LaValliere. Dave finally had enough and told her to go ahead and move to Canada while he finds a woman who's nice, loyal, and "whose uterus is not a graveyard for babies." Ouch, Dave. Harsh.

Dee divorced Dave and emigrated to Canada. I'm sure they have some kind of quarantine for venomous reptiles, though.

"God DAMN! Marc's destroying marriages without even trying now!" I laughed. "He is Godzilla and marriage is Tokyo."

I turned to Linda.

"Tell me, baby. Do ya miss that big galoot?"

"What? NO!" she crinkled her face in disgust.

"I don't know. I wish him well I guess," I told Linda. "The way you wish a tornado well. From a distance, and while holding an emergency flare gun."

A postcard arrived in June. It showed a very large moose.

Dear Touchdown,

Canada is cold. I got a plant. It's still alive! Tell Linda I'm sorry about the kick. I deserved it.

Love, Marc.

I read it twice. "That," I said, "is the first sentence he's ever written that wasn't a request."

"It's growth," Linda said.

"It's the plant. He's been given a plant, and it's changed his god damn life."

I sarcastically wiped away a fake tear and flicked it away with great embellishment.

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L. W. read the final contract in his office on the first Sunday of April, with the clipboard on his desk and the blinds half drawn.

"Condition one," he read, in the voice of a man reading a will to a family he disliked. "The party of the second part, Linda Mercer, will answer all unidentified phone numbers on speaker, regardless of embarrassment. Condition two: she will take the minivan to the car wash every first Sunday, to be judged by the beagle. Condition three: monthly dinner at Wendy's, no substitutions. Condition four: the blue dress shall be retired to the garage, to join the football seat covers, several hundred pencils, and the foam football in what the parties have agreed to call the Museum of Unrequested Affection."

"Admission is free," I said. "Gift shop's closed."

"Condition five," he said. "On every February 29th, the party of the first part, Jim Mercer, shall be released from all familial obligations at noon and shall return no later than noon the following day. The party of the second part, Linda Mercer, shall ask no questions. Not before, not during, and not after. She shall not follow him, call him, track him, hire anyone to track him, or interrogate the beagle."

"The beagle?" said Linda.

"The beagle is a known associate," said L. W.

"What if I just want to know where he is?"

"You will know exactly where he is not. He is not at home."

"Every leap day," Linda said slowly. "Forever."

"Every leap day, forever, which is once every four years. By my calculation that's roughly eight nights over the course of a normal marriage." L. W. lowered his glasses. "The way I figure it, that's a bargain. Most men spend that much on a boat."

"And what do I get?"

"Three years of every other kind of peace," said L. W. "And the knowledge that you earned it."

"And the 29th?"

"You earned that too."

Linda looked at me. I looked at the clipboard, which I'd retired and mounted on a plaque. She picked up the pen.

"Fine," she said. "But I'm putting an exception in for medical emergencies."

"Granted," said L. W.

"And for the kids."

"Granted."

"And if the house is on fire."

"Naturally."

She signed. Then, because she's smarter than all of us, she added a line at the bottom in small, neat handwriting that nobody noticed until years later: Party of the second part reserves the right to be extremely curious.

Throughout the rest of our marriage, the sex was better than before. Every now and then, Linda would send herself some really fancy lingerie. It was her, I checked her account behind her back. She'd say "I wonder who this was from?" and then sashay upstairs swinging her hips suggestively. I'd wait a while, sneak upstairs, rip it off her and call her a dirty whore while we had extremely rough sex for an hour which turned into the kind of orgasms where you'd see God Himself and He'd give you a wink and a thumbs up before kicking you off of the cloud you were on.

Love was at the bottom of it all. Lust was the icing on top.

I'm not gonna blow smoke up your ass and say that it was ideal. I had trust issues. Linda had trust issues. Every now and then I'd pull out that night as the ultimate Uno Reverse card on her in an argument, loudly proclaiming that there's no statute of limitations on adultery, which would instantly reduce her to tears and made me feel like shit. We went to therapy. We got through it.

Trust built up over time. Linda committed the unforgivable sin that all beautiful women commit. She aged. I paid for the cosmetic procedures and gym memberships, but after a time, it changed from "She's stunning" to "She's stunning for a XX year old woman". Still, she could put any 29 year old to shame, but on the other hand, she couldn't put her 29 year old self to shame, and I think she felt that whenever she was smearing whatever age defying concoction was popular on social media on herself in the mirror.

She lived with guilt. Guilt that our family almost became the casualty of a crazy person. Guilt that I had changed into someone she didn't entirely recognize any more due to her actions. There was a ton of therapy. And a ton of ways that guilt would express itself.

EPILOGUE

FEBRUARY 29TH: THE FIRST ONE

After the "unpleasantness", 4 years passed in a blur of soccer practice, orthodontist appointments, and a very long argument about whether a beagle can be a vegetarian. On the morning of the first leap day, I came downstairs at 11:55AM with a small overnight bag and a pleasant expression.

Linda was at the kitchen table, buttering toast with the focus of a woman defusing a toaster. Emma was 10. Tommy was 8. Touchdown, gray around the muzzle, lay on the Duke of Beagleton bed with the dignity of a retired general who'd seen things.

"So," said Linda.

"So."

"It's noon."

"Five minutes to."

"Where are you going?"

"That," I said gently, "falls under the heading of questions."

Her mouth opened, then closed, then opened again. "That's not a question. It's a location."

"It's a question with a disguise on."

"Jim."

"You signed the contract. Page 3, paragraph 5, the one with the notary stamp. I'd show you, but L. W. made me promise never to quote it in front of the children."

Emma looked up from her homework. "Where's Dad going?"

"To a conference," I said.

"On a Saturday?"

"It's a very important conference."

"What's it about?"

"Risk," I said. "Mostly the kind you can't put a number on."

Linda picked up her toast and set it down again. The clock struck noon. I kissed her on the forehead, patted the dog, and walked out the front door with a spring in my step and no destination whatsoever that anyone could prove.

I came home at 11:40AM the next morning. I wasn't hungover, and I wasn't bleary eyed. I was whistling. It was a jaunty tune, something from an old musical, and I only realized I was doing it when Linda gave me a look across the kitchen.

"You're whistling," she said.

"Am I?"

"You haven't whistled since the Obama administration."

"A man can whistle."

"What was the conference about?"

"Question," I said, wagging a finger. "Contract."

She stared at me with the intensity of a bomb sniffing dog. I stood perfectly still and let her. I wore the same clothes I'd left in, and the overnight bag looked untouched. I smelled like a hotel soap, which could have meant anything, because hotel soap smells like every other hotel soap.

"You're sunburned," she said finally.

"It's February."

"On the back of your neck."

"I have a window seat on a bus."

"What bus?"

"Linda."

She narrowed her eyes. "Your phone was at home."

"I left it on the table to prove I wasn't hiding anything."

"That proves nothing!"

"Exactly. Nothing is exactly what's there."

I patted my pocket, took out a single Godiva chocolate in a gold wrapper, and set it on the table between us. She looked at it as though it were a grenade with a ribbon on it.

"That's evidence," she whispered.

"It's a chocolate."

"From where?"

"From wherever chocolates come from. A land of pure imagination!" I said, and went upstairs to take a shower. Behind me, I heard her say to the dog, in a fierce, low voice, "Touchdown. Talk."

Touchdown sneezed twice.

FEBRUARY 29TH: THE SECOND ONE

Four years later, Linda was prepared.

She'd read a book on investigative reporting. She'd watched 11 hours of detective shows. She'd installed a doorbell camera and then, realizing it would only show me leaving, bought 3 more. On the morning of the second leap day she greeted me in the hall with a clipboard of her own.

"Before you go," she said, "I'd like to review the terms."

"That's my clipboard."

"It's mine now. I took it in the inevitable divorce." She cleared her throat. "I won't ask where you're going. I won't ask who you're seeing. I won't ask what you did last time, why you came home with a very specific type of tan line, or why the receipt in your wallet was for a single scoop of pistachio ice cream and a ticket to a planetarium."

"That," I said, "is a lot of not asking."

"I'm practicing."

"I appreciate the effort."

"I'm a completely neutral party," Linda said, in the tone of a woman holding a very large knife behind her back. "I'm only saying, for the record, that I've had four years to think about this, and I've come to terms with it. I'm at peace."

"You've been stirring the same cup of tea for 6 minutes."

"It's a very thorough stir."

I kissed her on the cheek. Emma, now 14 and furious about everything, rolled her eyes so hard I feared for her optic nerve. Tommy, 12 and suspicious, said, "Is it a spy thing?"

"I can neither confirm nor deny that it's a spy thing," I said.

"Is it a girl thing?" Emma asked.

Linda dropped the clipboard. We all looked at it. It lay on the floor between us like a fallen flag.

"It's a conference," I said. "On risk."

And I left.

I got back at 11:50AM the next morning, in a good mood, with a paper bag from a bakery I'd never mentioned. I put it on the counter. Inside were two croissants, one of which was only slightly eaten.

Linda looked at the bag. She looked at the croissants. She looked at me. Her left eye twitched.

"Two croissants," she said.

"I was hungry."

"One of them is half eaten."

"I was very hungry."

"Jim."

"Yes?"

"There's a lipstick lip print on your coffee cup."

"The barista had a lovely smile and a sense of humor about it."

"A sense of humor about what?"

I smiled. "Contract."

Her fists clenched. She took a long breath through her nose. In the corner, Touchdown, now blind in one eye and entirely deaf, thumped his tail against the Duke of Beagleton bed and gave a long, contented sigh that I interpreted as a vote in my favor.

"I'm going to find out," Linda said quietly.

"No, you aren't."

"I'm going to find out someday."

"You'll find out when I tell you," I said. "And I'm not going to."

FEBRUARY 29TH: THE THIRD ONE

By the third leap day, Linda had given up detective work and moved on to psychology.

She sat across from me at the kitchen table, with a pot of coffee and the careful, open expression of a hostage negotiator. Emma was 18 and about to leave for college. Tommy was 16 and had acquired a girlfriend, a driver's license, and a fear of eye contact. Touchdown had gone to the Great Dog Bed in the Sky two years earlier, and we'd buried him under the oak tree with a foam football and a chocolate Frosty, which I'm sure he'd have found tasteless. I still tear up when I think about that dog. I miss him terribly.

"Jim," said Linda, sliding a mug across the table. "I want you to know I'm not asking."

"Of course."

"I'm just making conversation."

"Of course."

"If hypothetically a person had a place to go, where would that person hypothetically go?"

"I'd imagine somewhere with a good reading lamp," I said, and sipped my coffee.

Her jaw tightened. She tried a different angle. "I've been thinking about Ellen. You know, L. W.'s friend."

"What about her?"

"I just wonder if she's still around. I know you've been in contact with her."

"Ellen's a very busy woman. I've shown you our conversations. She's looking to change careers to risk management."

"So you do know where she is."

"I know that she's busy. I know many busy women. It's the century." I set my cup down. "Linda, this is a very good interrogation. I mean that. You've used rapport, silence, and an open ended question in a single sentence. But I'm going to have to give you a 4 out of 10."

"A 4?"

"It's a solid 4. I gave you a 6 on your first attempt, so you've regressed."

She slapped the table. The coffee jumped. In the doorway, Tommy and his girlfriend froze mid step, took one look at the two of us, and silently backed out.

"I'm your wife," Linda said.

"You are."

"I have a right."

"You have a right to remain curious," I said. "It's in the fine print."

I got up, kissed her on the head, and walked out the door. Duke, our beagle rescue, did that loud howling bark that beagles do.

I came home the next day with a small bag and no explanation. I'd brought nothing. No receipts, no chocolates, no tan lines, no mysterious bakery goods. I walked into the kitchen, hung up my coat, and washed my hands at the sink.

Linda stood in the middle of the room, arms crossed.

"Well?" she said.

"Well, what?"

"You have nothing. No evidence. No croissants, no lipstick, no chocolates. But you smell like perfume! GOTCHA!"

I pulled an expensive bottle of perfume out of the bag I was carrying.

"For you," I said. "I sprayed some so I could smell it."

"So you've successfully covered all of your bases," she accused.

"Maybe," I said, "there was nothing to find."

"Or maybe you're good at this now."

"Or maybe," I said, drying my hands on a dish towel, "there's a version of events where a man spends 24 hours in a rented room with a good book, a quiet pillow, Godiva truffles, and comes home feeling like a king."

"That's it? That's the whole story?"

"I didn't say that was the whole story."

"But you didn't say it wasn't."

"Correct."

She stared at me. I stared back. Somewhere in the house, a clock ticked. Somewhere down the street, a neighbor's dog barked at the leaves. In the oak tree, beneath a small stone that read SIR TOUCHDOWN, DUKE OF BEAGLETON -- GOOD BOY, a single cardinal landed on a branch, looked at the two of us with its head tilted, and flew away.

Linda put her hands on her hips. And then, to my great surprise, she smiled. It started small, in the corner of her mouth, then spread across her face like sunrise.

"You know what the best part is?" she said.

"What's that?"

"I've spent 12 years trying to figure out what you do on leap day. And I've realized something."

"Oh?"

"Whatever it is, you come home. Every single time." She stepped closer. She put one hand on my chest, over the place where my heart is. "That's the whole contract, isn't it? Not what you do. That you come back."

"That's the whole thing," I said.

"So I don't need to know."

"No."

"But I'm still going to try."

"I'd be disappointed if you didn't."

She kissed me. It was a good one, long and slow and not remotely a 4 out of 10. When we broke apart, she looked at me with the particular mischief I'd first seen across a table at Wendy's, in a booth that smelled like fries and mild regret.

"Same old me," she said.

"Same old you," I agreed.

February still sucks. It always will for me. But every 4 years it sucks one day longer, and that's the day I get to myself.