Footsteps climbed the stairs and slowly crossed the hall. “Lisa? Are you in there?” The handle turned, the door swung open and an attractive middl...-aged woman walked gingerly into the room. She stopped dead when she saw me. The family resemblance to my housemate was obvious, in both her face and her figure. She wasn’t staring at me with quite the degree of horror I had grimly anticipated, but seemed merely disappointed. “Oh no,” she said, “not again.” “Hello,” I said, forcing a smile. “I don’t. Claudia began to explain the day’s events to him. Several times she touched his hand and their knees pressed together. She then began to hold his hand and shuffle closer to him, becoming genuinely concern for her friend and co-worker. Her ulterior motive, though, was to make good on a promise she whispered to him as he lay on his hospital bed. Once he got well, she was going to give him a good fucking.He answered her questions filling in his memory of the lost day. She willingly answered his as. He had so far no unambiguous proof of the infidelity of his wife, although he judged it of vanishingly ridiculous likeliness that the couple he was watching had come to the hotel to play cards, rather than to quench their hormonal troubles. His hopes, however gullible they were, allowed him to regain his composure and to numb his heart against any coming shock that might otherwise have been critical. It took Nathan no longer than a few minutes to find the room his wife and her companion had. She glowered atMegan, her best friend, who wore a smile indicating she wasthe mastermind of the affair. Stacey strictly instructed toher friends and co-workers that she didn’t want a big to-doparty. She liked the sentiment, but knew her friends toowell. They would get her drunk, and embarrass her beyondbelief. She wasn’t sure exactly what they would do, but shesuspected some of the gifts awaiting her in a nice littlepile would be a little “too mature” for her.