“I’ll be home around ten.”

“Don’t bother.”

Still in her high heels, she marched into the kitchen. She felt the smooth fabric of the dress against her breasts, pubis, and butt as she reached up to the wine rack to take down a bottle of very expensive Pinot Noir from the rack.

She was aware that the fabric of her dress didn’t have its usual erotic effect. She slammed open a drawer and fumbled among the garlic presses, cheese planes, peelers, and ginger graters for a corkscrew. Not exactly a corkscrew. She hated them. They screwed violently into the cork and pulled it out against its will. This thing worked with the cork, penetrated it and puffed air into the bottle to pop the cork out of its own accord.

She filled a fragile long-stemmed glass with the dark wine and took the bottle with her into the living room. She set both glass and bottle down on the coffee table and put a k.d. lang CD into the player, turned the volume so it was just right and sat in her favorite leather armchair. She kicked off her pumps and curled up in the embracing chair as she began to sip the wine.

“What exactly do you think is going on?”

“I think the son of a bitch is cheating on me. That’s why I called you.”

“And you say that Michelle Anderson recommended my services?”

“She said you had helped her, yes. And she said you were good.”

“Did she tell you that I was expensive?”

“That doesn’t matter.” Mrs. Windborne sat bolt upright in the easy chair in Angela’s office, her purse set primly on the coffee table in front of her. There was a couch, the easy chair Mrs. Windborne occupied, and Angela’s club chair. There were abstract paintings on the walls but nothing figurative to distract clients from what they were here to say. She wanted her clients relaxed enough to open up, but alert enough to be able to hear her responses and focused on their business. Sometimes it wasn’t easy to achieve that delicate balance of relaxed, focused and alert.

A bookshelf occupied one end of the office and a desk the other. Angela never felt comfortable facing a client across a desk. She feared it might make visitors overly tense or guarded-remind them of some previous experience with a teacher or official. Such as a judge. During a divorce.

“Have you talked to him?”

“Talked? Have I talked to him? That’s all I’ve done. I’ve asked him point blank. He denies it. I’ve confronted him with his lies. He just tells more stories. Each one is more outrageous than the last until I finally give up, just glad that he’s back with me for a while.”

“Do you have any-”

“Evidence? What kind of evidence would prove anything?”

“Phone bills. Is he calling the same phone number on his cell phone all the time after hours?”

“He has his cell phone bill sent to his office.”

“I suppose that’s suspicious?”

“He says it’s a company phone because he uses it for company business.”

“Credit card charges? Canceled checks? E-mail messages?”

“Why are you grilling me? I’m not the one you’re supposed to investigate. I thought you were some kind of psychic or something. Can’t you just tell?”

The handsome woman in her late forties or early fifties fell to the back of her chair sobbing.

“It’s mostly old-time detective work. We have to find evidence if you want to be sure.” It was time for gentle words.

“Gumshoes following people around with cameras?” She started to laugh through her sobs at the image.

“To put it bluntly, yes. We have operatives we use when the time comes. When we have a good reason to believe someone is cheating, we do just that. We send someone with a camera.”

“Can you set up a sting?” She was bolt upright again.

“We can do that too.”

“How would that work?”

“One of our operatives-”

“Seduces the son of a bitch?”

“That’s essentially it, yes. Or the girl. We work for men, too, you know.”

“That’s like working for the other side.”

Angela saw Mrs. Windborne’s eyes perusing the books in their case and followed her thoughts. Psychoanalysis, Civilization and its Discontents, The Analysis of Dreams. Classic Freud. Jung, Adler, Erickson, Becker. Books on modern psychology, schools of therapy, and forensics. Doyle? Sherlock Holmes?

“You’d be surprised. Look, let’s go back to the beginning. Let me explain our process. What I can provide with my skills is an understanding of motives, but not actions.”

“Why not?”

“I can read what people want to do, what they plan to do, and what they have recently done, but beyond that, I never know whether something is what a person wants to do, wants to avoid, or has done. It’s all the same in the mind’s eye, and that’s what I can see.”

“Isn’t it enough to know that the asshole wants to cheat on me?”

“Is it? Then we don’t need to do anything else. You seem pretty convinced already. Why do you need me?”

“I want to know for sure.”

“Exactly.”

“But can’t there be different motives behind the same actions? I mean, what if someone does something without meaning to?”

“You mean like a one-night stand?”

“Um-hum,” Mrs. Windborne said, a smile playing across her lips as she wilted into her chair.

Angela knew that this was a time for silence. She saw the image of the man who was not Mr. Windborne flooding the woman’s mind as she reviewed the “mistake” that had fueled her imagination ever since. Angela saw Mrs. Windborne, overwhelmed with his praise and attention, eagerly undressing herself as the mystery man undressed and let his erection loose. She saw Mrs. Windborne kneel before the man, take his cock into her mouth…

“I mean, it could be something you didn’t intend, couldn’t it? Suppose you have too much to drink and it just happens. That wouldn’t be your fault, would it? Unless you planned it or did it again?”

Angela tuned in to Mrs. Windborne’s thoughts. Mrs. Windborne felt feminine and desirable, that made her feel wanted and beautiful and sexy. Supine on the bed, her legs open to receive the man’s cock into her throbbing cunt. He plunges into her as she sighs with pleasure.

Time to speak.

“Think about it. If that happens doesn’t it mean the person wanted it to? Wasn’t the person ready for it, looking for the opportunity? Maybe you didn’t know who or when, but you knew that you were ready for it, that you wanted it. And everyone around you knew it. The signals are unmistakable. Step by step. She sends the signal that she’s available. He lets her know he is too. Each signal becomes more clear than the last until it’s undeniable and…”

Mrs. Windborne was silent for a moment. The image Angela was receiving became more explicit, more active. Plunging, gasping, release of deep-seated pleasures long locked up. The man clasped her to him and rolled onto his back to put her on top. She thrust hard forward and back until the first orgasm overtook her. She didn’t stop but continued until a second orgasm shook her body. Surprised at her response, she continued until she came a third time and then rolled from the man and lay on her back gasping.

Mrs. Windborne’s voice was mechanical. “I suppose you are right.”

“That’s what happened, isn’t it?”

“Yes. I was ready. I was waiting for months. I knew I was going to do it, and then when my mother had her heart attack and I had to fly to New York to visit her…”

“Um-hum,” Angela said a soft, understanding look in her eyes. “Tell me.”

“It was a last-minute flight. We were living in L.A. then. Before we moved to Chicago. I had to go by way of O’Hare. There was a snowstorm. We were able to land, but we couldn’t take off. So, they put us up in a hotel. I couldn’t sleep. I was exhausted, but I couldn’t sleep. I went down to the hotel bar and this nice man offered to buy me a drink.”