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But why should I, the impotent cuckold, worry? No stirring of the slumbering weakling below answers her call.
    In the men’s room, I unleash my fearsome weapon (spineless soldier, when last did you go forth to battle?) and piss into the urinal, a stream the colour of cowardice. Am I different from other men? I always marvel at the locker-room tales of multiple conquests that I have heard, of concupiscent appetites, of night-long rigours between the sheets. Oh, there was a time when I could rut with adequate if not extravagant vigour. Enough to perform my duty to the species. But soon after my wedding, a series of humiliations proved I was unequal to the task of responding to Annabelle’s womanly wants, and I went as dead as the poets of antiquity.
    And yet — as I keep proclaiming (can anyone hear me?) — I hold this unyielding affection for Annabelle. Call me ill, call me twisted. I love her.
    I was thirty-three and she was twenty-four. She was newly graduated from a prestigious school of fine arts, with a budding career as a set designer, but when we met, her role was as a Crown witness in the courtroom. A fraud case, something to do with an arts grant: the dreary details are forgotten.
    I cross-examined her for two hours. She stayed on in the courtroom and, as she said, “watched me” for the rest of the day. Afterwards she complimented me on my victory. I stammered out an invitation to buy her a drink.
    Three months later we married. We quickly parented a child of whom neither of us saw enough. Little Deborah was entrusted to a nanny while Annabelle furthered her career — set design, art direction, the stage, then opera — and while I busied myself gaining fame and fortune, and a reputation as a wonderful fellow to have a drink with.
    But I presume she became progressively bored with windy Arthur Beauchamp, with all his bloated, orotund posturings. I was about as romantic as the sacking of Rome. I didn’t know until later on she’d had a series of suitors. As sharply tuned as I may have been in the courtroom, I was a blind witness to the transgressions of the woman with whom I had sworn to share my life. But upon one wine-soaked evening, overcome by an unguarded desire to repent, Annabelle reeled off her list of lovers and I died as many deaths.
    I am sorry, Gowan, if I have seemed so self-pitying. As I have admitted, I am slightly under the influence. Okay, let us make haste to the dance. It was well under way when I arrived. Kimberley spotted me immediately, pounced like a cougar, grabbed my hand and yanked me onto the dance floor, where we staggered around for a while in imitation of Astaire and Rogers. Afterwards — I will admit this, however incriminating it might be — I offered to buy her a drink. A rye and ginger, that is what she asked for. I should have realized right then she was not a well person.
    I had a double whisky. I was packing it away, frankly, getting sloshed. It had been a tough week of marking mid-term papers. Was that it? I don’t know what my excuse was. Maybe it was the strange electricity in the air. Maybe I should worry about my drinking. . . .
    God, what’s my father going to think? Or would theold roué even give a sodding damn?
    So I escaped from her, circulated, joked it up with the jocks, talked football — the Grey Cup was on Sunday — but every time I turned around she was in my face. Making merry conversation, all bright green eyes and bright red lips (a product called Shameless!) in a huggy little basic-black mid-thigh mini. I actually had a good time with her. She keeps coming at you from places you don’t expect. She’s a stitch. She has incredible timing.
    Gowan, she is going to be brutal to cross-examine. She has an élan. Blunt. Chatty. Makes lots of eyeball contact. She’ll play to the jury; she’ll have all the men smitten. I don’t think we ought to have too many males on this jury, Gowan. I