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George, where he had a room reserved for us that day. We had started meeting there instead of April’s apartment because he was afraid of her walking in on us.
    I picked up my key at the front desk and undressed upon entering the room. Fred was already there, working on his laptop.
    He asked me what was new in my life, and I told him about my job interview the next day.
    “Congratulations,” he said. “We’ll have to celebrate. I’ll order up a bottle of champagne when we’re done.”
    Fucking always came first.
    I didn’t even like champagne, but it was such a lovely gesture, I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the smell of it alone made me nauseated. (Too many Dommy P hangovers during the dot-com era.)
    “Here’s to your new job,” he said, putting a glass of Veuve Clicquot in my hand.
    I choked it down and asked for more. (Yes, I choked down
champagne.
How spoiled was I?)
    “Jacqueline,” he said, reclining on the bed next to me. “There’s something I want to tell you.”
    I sat up, intrigued.
    “Can I trust you?” he asked, refilling my glass.
    FYI: If you even needed to ask this question, the answer was obviously no, but I said yes anyway. I had a feeling that I was about to hit pay dirt.
    He started telling me that his wife didn’t fuck him anymore, which frustrated him and hurt his feelings. Typical married guy stuff, right?
    But get this: Up until a few months ago, Fred had a mistress. Some secretary type he had picked up at The Prime Rib. So they were sneaking around, having an affair. Fred even considered leaving his wife for this other woman, he was so in love with her.
    Then one day, Fred got a phone call from his mistress. She demanded fifty thousand dollars cash from him, or else she was going to tell his wife about their affair. He was heartbroken that the woman he had fallen in love with would try to extort money from him, but instead of paying her off, Fred told his wife everything.
    It was a great story, but why was he telling it to me? Was I supposed to feel bad for him?
    “My wife is making me go to therapy,” he explained, “and I’m not sure that my therapist would approve of this relationship.”
    Therapy?
I thought that Fred talked all of his problems out with me. What did he need a therapist for?
    “Did you tell him about us?” I asked.
    “Not yet,” he replied. “I wasn’t sure that I should.”
    “Do you
want
to stop seeing me?”
    “No, I really don’t. But he says that I objectify women, and I think that this relationship might be symptomatic of that problem.”
    “Oh, Fred. All men objectify women. It’s not a
problem.
It’s just what men
do
.”
    I climbed on top of him.
    “Maybe you should stop seeing this guy,” I said. “Your therapy is obviously going nowhere.”
    I didn’t want Fred second-guessing our arrangement until I had another source of income. I rubbed myself against him lap-dancer style, and he got hard immediately.
    “Doesn’t this feel good?” I whispered into his ear. “There’s nothing wrong with what we’re doing, and
I’ll never tell
.”
    It was scary how fast a man will forget his wife and child, all of his responsibilities, and everything his therapist tells him, just for some sex.
    Fred’s therapist would say that he “objectified” me, but there was more to it than that. Fred was obviously having a midlife crisis. He was unhappy in the same way that I was unhappy with Mike: He was bored and wanted passion in his life. It was a classic syndrome. Remember
Madame Bovary.
    And Fred really should have known better. He had been busted for cheating before, but he couldn’t stop himself when he saw a pretty young thing sitting next to him at the Four Seasons. He couldn’t stop himself from calling her, meeting her in hotel rooms, fucking her. He had plenty of opportunities to stop himself, but he didn’t want to.
    He had never even asked about birth control. (I was on the Pill, but for all he knew, I could have been