This only infuriated Helen all the more. "Hanging up your coat! Huh!" she grunted, playing for time, trying to think of what tack to take now. The pretty blonde woman had visualized it all quite differently, and now she was forced to deal with a reality which was growing more and more confusing.

"I… I thought we might talk a little!" she declared, her blue eyes glinting with anger.

Adam sat down behind his desk. "Talk? About what?" he inquired as though she had said the strangest thing in the world.

"Anything. About anything!" Helen spat out. "I'm a woman, Adam! I need companionship. I need…" Her voice trailed off and a crimson shade colored her features. She grappled and twisted at the pink sheet she had brought in from her bedroom, feeling more naked than she'd dreamed possible underneath. Why hadn't she just gone to bed as usual? It was Stan's fault that she had attempted this confrontation!

"Yes?" Adam looked at his wife inquiringly. What was it anyway? Why didn't she leave him alone? Of all times to come bothering him, just when he was at the commencement of a very important phase of his life and his work.

"Sex!" The word slipped from Helen's lips and seemed to hang suspended in the room. Helen was aware of all the books on the shelf behind her husband's back. She felt mortified. How could she have said such a thing? She had, of course, intimated as much in the past, but never had she come right out and said it!

Adam regarded his wife and realized for the first time that she was naked underneath the sheet. His first reaction was to look down at his briefcase as if to ascertain that it was still there. Just looking at it gave him a raging erection, and the middle-aged scientist could feel his penis throbbing with life again.

"Sex?" he repeated, dumbly.

"Yes!" Helen felt she might as well brazen it out now that she'd started it. "You'd think you'd never heard of the word!"