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 | Have you ever thought about trading in your partner - totally - for an evening or two?
TOM
My last name, Visser, is the French infinitive for copulate. Obviously my ancestors were studs or I would now be signing tuition checks as Tom Voyeur or Tom Fondue. The urge to procreate still rages in my blood despite sixteen years of marriage, three children, and the burden of being police chief of Birchfield, Massachusetts. The opportunity to satisfy that urge knocks constantly as well. I'm not the worst looking guy on the force and some women would do anything to avoid a five-dollar parking ticket. Yielding to temptation would be my highway to hell, of course. I'm a pillar of the community. A role model. Maybe I should have known the bar was just too high for a guy named Visser, but one thing led to another.
PATTI
To celebrate my thirty-second birthday, my parents Dot and Everett were
treating the children and me to lunch. I needed the party; for some reason
this milestone depressed me. My twenties had come and gone in a deluge of
runny noses and spilled milk. My thirtieth birthday had been overshadowed by
my students' spring piano recital. Ditto thirty-one. But thirty-two...the
intervening year hadn't contained any significant events like pregnancy or
refinancing. It had just slithered away.
MARCUS
I rented a convertible in Savannah and drove to all my
appointments with the top down, the wind in my hair. I love the south.
People acted civilized here: ma'am, sir, thank you, opened doors, ate bacon.
Thanks to the churches on every corner, they had a better grip on their
place in the universe, namely, second. Someday I'd like to move here and
just read, like Thomas Jefferson at Monticello. Maybe start a little
orchestra: had I not been dragooned into running the family business when my
father died, I could have been a decent conductor by now. Ah well, life
never turned out the way you thought it should. Look at my father: dead.
Look at my mother: alive. Look at Joan leering at priapic woodcuts in her
garret as she dreams of a National Book Award. By comparison I'm not the
worst off of the bunch. I have a job, a house, a son, health, wealth, wife,
mistress: did life get much better than that?
Not unless you had aspirations. Then you were f***ed.
JOAN
Every moment of my day produces results. I never do just one
thing when I can do two, like read a page of the dictionary while I'm
defecating, or take a Finnish language course while I'm commuting to work. I
generally answer my voluminous e-mail while conversing with my husband
Marcus. The eldest of six children born to parents who could only afford
two, I learned efficiency and responsibility at an early age. While other
girls played with dolls, I rinsed genuine turds from my brothers' diapers.
Before even thinking about homework, I made dinner and ran several loads of
wash. My mother, a toll collector, wasn't good for much but dragging in the
door at three-thirty, making herself two martinis, and passing out on the
couch. My father came home at six. He expected dinner on the table then
spent the evening watching sitcoms. I ran the house until I got a full
scholarship to Radcliffe. Never went back again.
CODY
Judging by their stares, the people of Dunboro had never seen
anything like my perfectly preserved 1965 Thunderbird. Granted, its
turquoise sides and white roof stood out from the surrounding traffic like
an exotic sampan in a sea of rusty battleships, but you'd think I was
driving the Popemobile. No one knew what to make of me, a blond, tanned guy
with dark sunglasses and a fantastically straight nose. Rare, if not
unknown, in these parts. Beside me sat the type of woman one would expect to
see with such a man.
LYDIA
I worship Cody. I've been with him six years, since I was
fourteen. Not only with him, of course. Cody isn't that sort of man and I'm
not that sort of woman: early in our relationship we agreed that monogamy is
not only boring but unrealistic, especially if you're attractive. Let's just
say Cody's my main course but I also love appetizers, soup, and dessert.
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