On the other hand, I thought about twenty golden minutes with Tanya, with the youth and heat of her flesh against my flesh. Twenty yahoo-screaming minutes with those glossed lips parting to gasp at the force of my urgent entry, until our mutual climax which, who knows, might never end, might never dump me from its height into the black tar pit of shame and remorse. My family or Tanya. It was a tough choice to make.

Maybe women will call me shallow for saying that, but that's women for you. Men wrestle with these matters at a deeper level than women know. In the end, though, a deal is a deal. Cathy had lived up to her part of it. She'd been a full-time mother, a dedicated homemaker, a wife of endless tenderness and surrender. I adored her. And-yes-a deal's a deal.

So bye-bye, what's-your-name-Tanya-bye-bye. I avoided her for the rest of the summer. No more of her quick, gentle touches. No more imaginary lint on my chest, no more massages. And hold the flattery, thanks, just go type up the application forms and get me a cup of coffee while you're at it.

She ended up sleeping with Stan Halsey instead. He was one of our environmental-impact experts, a thirty-five-year-old idealist with a social-worker wife and a brand-new baby girl. By the time Tanya went back to college, Stan was living in a motel, trying to grovel his way out of a separation. All the same, he was a lucky schmuck for those twenty minutes, I had to admit.

Well, it's a world of choices, that's the thing. I'd always have my fantasies. Plus I still had my wife.

And that's what I was musing about when the whole thing started. Sitting on the cushioned chair, on the brick patio, watching my kids play in the backyard.

At some point then, the wife in question brought me a glass of lemonade and kissed me.

"What the hell is this game anyway?" I asked her, tilting the glass toward the kids on the lawn. "I mean, they never actually seem to play it. They've just been making up the rules for the past half hour."