Baby proof

'I was at Daphne's actually,' I say, taking my coat off, remembering my bra situation one second too late.

'Nice tubes, Claudia,' Michael says. 'Guess it is show-and-tell at Elgin Press today. Or at least show. We can talk about it, though… If you want.'

I put my jacket back on and say, 'Forgot my bra. Sorry.'

'No need to apologize,' Michael says.

Jess gives him a playful, but strangely possessive, jab, which tells me that this might be a dash more than an isolated hookup. At least in Jess's eyes. My instinct is to leave the room and get the separate scoop from both parties later in the day, but then I figure that I might as well just ask the question now. So I say, 'What's going on here anyway? How long have you two been creeping around like this?'

Jess slides her arm around and says, 'Since you were in Italy, and I found my sperm bank.'

Michael laughs and says, 'Don't listen to her. We use condoms.'

Condoms, plural, I think, as Jess laughs and says, 'I'm talking him into it, though,' she says, laughing.

'Seriously?' I say.

'Seriously,' Jess says. 'He has good genes, you know.'

I look at Michael, a man who can't even commit to giving a woman a key to his apartment. He smiles and shrugs.

'But we're also in love,' Jess says. 'So it's all good.'

'That's true,' Michael says. 'I love her.'

I study their matching inscrutable expressions. They are thoroughly amused with themselves but also strangely serious.

I shake my head and say, 'This is too fucking weird.' Then I head to my room to get a bra.

That afternoon, I am trying to work, but mostly contemplating how I should get in touch with Ben, when there is a knock on my office door. I assume it is Michael who has yet to show his guilty face.

'Come in!' I say, leaning back and mentally preparing my one-liner.

The door opens and Richard appears, sporting my favorite literary look: tweed blazer, turtleneck, and glasses. I am happy to see him-and still quite attracted to him. But overriding this is a sense of awkwardness due to the fact that in the ten days since our return, this is our first face-to-face interaction.

'I didn't know you wore glasses,' I say with a nervous laugh.

'Reading glasses,' he says, taking them off and slipping them into his jacket pocket.

I smile and motion toward my guest chair. 'Have a seat.'

He closes the door to a crack and sits down.

'So, Parr? What's the deal?' he says. He gives me a little smirk that doesn't completely mask a dash of hurt pride. I am pretty sure that Richard is not accustomed to being blown off in any manner. 'You didn't like Lake Como or what?'

I clear my throat and stammer, 'I've just been busy… But no, I had a lovely time at Lake Como.'

'Lovely, huh?' Richard says with an amused expression.

'You know what I mean. I had a great time,' I say more sincerely. ' Thank you.'

'You already thanked me,' he says. 'No need to say it again.'

We smile at each other for what feels like ten minutes, but is probably only about thirty seconds. In that brief window, it becomes absolutely clear, if it wasn't already, that our affair is over. I know Richard has no deep feelings for me-and I'm almost as sure that he has at least one other woman in his rotation, and a few on the back burner. But I still feel compelled to give him an explanation. So I say, 'Listen. I feel really pathetic telling you this, but-'

Richard interrupts and says, 'Careful. Pathetic can be charming on the right woman.'

I laugh and say, 'Not in my case.'

'Let me guess,' he says. 'You're still in love with your ex-husband?'

I look at him, wondering how he knew. I can't think of a single time I've brought Ben up since Raymond Jr.'s baptism. Then again, maybe that's precisely how he knew. I consider a full explanation, but instead I say offhandedly, 'I told you it was pathetic.'

Then I reach into my top desk drawer for my cocktail ring. I can't return the trip to Italy-and it would be way too uncomfortable and gauche to offer up money for my half of our travel expenses. But I can symbolically return the ring. I say, 'I feel weird about keeping this.' As I attempt to hand it back to him, I have an unexpected jolt of being in high school when I returned Charlie's letter jacket to him upon our departure for college.

Richard waves me off and says, 'Oh, for God's sake, Parr. It was nothing. It wasn't even that expensive. Keep it.'

'Are you sure?' I say.

He gives me an exasperated look.

I put the box back in my drawer and say, 'Okay… thank you. I really do love it.'

'Well,' he says, standing. ' That was the point, ya know.' He stands as I feel a mix of relief and regret. I am relieved that the conversation was so painless, and that I have no sense that working together will be awkward moving forward-which is obviously the biggest fear with any office romance. But I feel regret because I like Richard and will miss hanging out with him. And frankly, I will also miss sleeping with him. The thought of being thirty-five, at my theoretical sexual prime, and abstinent is not one that I relish. I know that I'm at risk for being completely alone. Richard turns to leave and then looks back at me with a trace of a smile. 'If you change your mind, you know where to find me. Just call me. No strings attached.'

After he is gone I replay his words and decide that although he meant it as a selling point, there is something almost tragic about a no-strings-attached kind of life.

Of course there is also something really sad about the opposite sort of life, too-a life where people stay together because of strings, I think, as Maura phones me from the parking lot of Zoe's ballet practice and says, 'Well. He's doing it again.'

I know right away that she is talking about Scott. He is cheating on her again.

'Could you be wrong?' I say. 'Remember that one time you were wrong-and he really was just working late?'

I hear her inhale and then say, 'I hired someone to follow him. I have him on tape.'

'Oh, God, Maura… I'm so sorry.'

'Don't,' she says. 'You'll make me cry.'

I try to switch out of sympathy mode and deal with facts instead. 'Tell me what happened,' I say.

Maura says that she started suspecting Scott of having an affair based on the same tired patterns: working late, flowers sent to appease her, distracted behavior, ceaseless voice-mail checking. She says that the worst part has always been the wondering, so last week she opened the yellow pages and called the first PI listed, a guy named Lorenz whom she describes as a 'Sopranos outcast type who cleans up well enough to look like a legitimate businessman.' She says she paid him a one-thousand-dollar cash advance and in five days he had proof-a blurry video of Scott meeting his woman in a bar in Battery Park City. They had three drinks each and got cozy in a corner booth.

'How cozy?' I say.

'Daphne would call it canoodling,' she says. Maura and I always tease Daphne for her celebrity-magazine jargon.

'Hmm,' I say. 'So what happened next?'

She tells me that Lorenz followed them onto the elevator at the hotel, taping the following furtive whispers behind him:

'Can you please stay overnight?'

(Inaudible).