“Fine, then you would have kissed that guy in South Beach.”

“No.” But the way she’d told the story, she might have been right. In a moment like that, I might have slipped. “If I did,” I said, “I would have felt awful. It would have been cheating to me.”

“No, that’s not cheating. Kissing or making out, especially in a situation like that, is not cheating.”

“It is.”

She sighed. “You know how many of your friends who are in relationships do stuff like that?”

“None that I know of.”

“None that tell you.”

I laughed. “Maybe you’re right.” But the truth was I felt like a farm girl led into town for the first time. Was she right? Was this one of those things that everyone believed except for me? Was I some innocent, as Jane said? Someone behind the times?

“You won’t tell anyone about me…you know, about me being red-blooded, will you?” She smiled then dropped it.

“No way. I’m a vault.”

“Good. You’ll be the only one in the news business.” She glanced at her watch. “I should get going.”

I felt as if I had missed some amorphous opportunity, one that would have allowed me to connect with Jane, and I regretted it. “Hey, Jane. I’m sorry.”

She shook her head, silent. She picked her phone off the table, looked at it, then bent down and tossed it in her bag. She straightened up and smiled.

“That’s your anchorwoman smile,” I said. “I’ve seen it.”

She laughed, her own personal smile returning, one that was natural and made the sides of her eyes crease just a little. She reached across the table and lifted my hand, giving me a little squeeze. Her fingers were smooth but firm. “I’m glad we’re going to be working together.”

“Me, too. Hey, Jane, don’t I need to do something this weekend, like rehearsals?”

She shook her head. “Just the on-air people. But be ready for trial-by-fire on Monday.” She took a silver cigarette case out of her purse. Opening it, she pulled out some bills and put them on the table. “I’ve got to get out of here. Zac has had enough time to cool off. Time for damage control, and then I have to get to the station.”

“Will you and Zac be okay?”

She gave a hard, short laugh. “A few months ago, I would have said ‘yeah.’ Zac knows I’m red-blooded. And he still loves me.”

“What’s happened over the last few months?”

She gathered her wrap made of taupe-colored cashmere, her eyes downcast. “He’s been getting sick of it. I mean, who can blame him? It’s just that we had an understanding before, and now he’s not…Well, he’s not so understanding anymore.”

Elegantly, Jane swung the wrap around her shoulders, then released her deep black hair, letting it fall around her like a shiny shawl. She stood. “I forgot to ask you-what happened with Theo last night?”

I said nothing, and in that moment, Jane must have read my face.

She laughed. She leaned over me. “Was it hot?”

In that instant, I saw Theo leaning over me, moving into me, his hair brushing the sides of my face. I blushed with the memory. “Yeah.”

“Did it feel like anything you’d ever had before?” When I paused, she said, “C’mon. You’ve had sex before, Izzy, but this was something different, right? Something more electrifying than you’ve felt.”

I could feel his lips biting mine; I could feel his fingers everywhere. I flushed more deeply. “Yeah.”

“Was it so good it felt like your whole body filled up with heat? The kind of heat that you didn’t know if you could bear, but yet somehow you loved it?”

“Yeah.”

“And you felt like your mind was going to explode?”

I saw Theo and me then, slick with sweat, coming together, setting off explosions. “Yeah.”

She stood up, taking the heat of the moment, the heat of the memories with her. “That’s how I felt last night, too,” she said. “That’s how I always feel. That’s one of the reasons why I’ve had such a hard time giving it up.”

“What are the other reasons?”

Her eyes went thoughtful. She looked past me for a moment. “There isn’t one person who can be everything to me. I think it’s unfair to try and make Zac my best friend, my lover, my business partner, the co-owner of our houses, my accountant, the person I cut loose with, the person whose shoulder I cry on.” She looked at me.

I said nothing, sensing more.

“Different people inspire me in different ways,” she continued. “They fascinate me in different ways. I like to be let into someone else’s life, to see what other people are doing with their days.” She stopped and shook her head. “I just look at my own life differently after I’ve gotten a taste of someone else’s.”

I nodded. I understood a little, I suppose.

“Anyway, I’ve got lots of other reasons,” Jane said. “Those are just some of them.”

Before I could respond, she turned, and then Jane Augustine was gone.

8

J ane sat in Zac’s studio in their basement. They always did their best talking while he worked. Her husband’s back was to her. Years ago, he used to be hunched over the wet tray in the dark room. Now he hunched in front of the computer or over his printer, searching for the blackest of blacks, switching papers from Portfolio to Silver Rag to Maestro.

“You want to tell me who it was?” He didn’t turn, his eyes firmly on the screen.

The image there was one of a pink balcony hanging precariously over an orange brick alleyway just off Belden Avenue in Chicago. Back Alleys was the title of Zac’s photographic exhibit at an art gallery here in town. He’d been successful with these photos of alleys in New York and D.C., and he’d finally felt it was time to feature the town he had called home for almost a decade. The show had been so successful, selling hundreds of photos in the three weeks since the opening, that Zac had been working constantly to fill the orders. He’d been on a roll and had been happy lately. But then he’d returned early from meeting his agent in New York and found Jane missing.

It wasn’t that such a thing hadn’t happened before. In days past, sometimes, Zac actually wanted to know a few details-what they did to her, what she did to them. Sometimes the details got him excited. Other times, he was only putting up with her and her dalliances because he loved her.

Today was definitely one of the latter.

She could tell this from the way Zac’s lat muscles tensed under his stylishly worn T-shirt, originally black but grayed from so much washing. She could tell from the way his movements were fast and sharp, rather than relaxed, almost dreamy, the way he usually worked when he was happy.

“Just some-” she started to say.

“Just some guy?” he interrupted, his voice edged with impatience.

“Something like that.” Although that wasn’t true. He was some guy who’d been following her. Some creep who’d been making notations about the most minute, private things in her life. Despite her public job, Jane hated for her life to be made public. And she’d been lucky because her affairs had always existed in a void for her.

Zac cleared his throat, a habit of his that sprang up when he had something to say which he didn’t feel confident about, but something he’d thought about for a long time.

It was so strange how well she knew him. In many ways, she knew him better than she knew herself; she understood the reasons for his behavior so much better than she did her own. For example, she was a wife who cheated, and according to most people she was wanton, immoral and wrong. And although she had her reasons for it, ninety percent of the time she agreed with those people. It was the ten percent she had told Izzy about. The ten percent that got her into trouble.

She’d promised Zac recently that she wouldn’t do it anymore, that she would be a proper wife who never strayed. She meant it, too, but it was harder than she thought. And yet, she had expected him to forgive her. But now there was this edge to his back, this fuming energy that poured off him.