Monday, June 2nd, 2025

In the early dark of morning, instead of reading her ghastbrood & mournwrights post-mortem romance novel, Lyrou downloaded a career builder app, used its career history tool, and specified the kind of work she'd like. Having then made breakfast for her family and being left in the house to herself, she sat at her kitchen counter and reopened the job app to begin browsing postings and applying more directly. It's not that she held herself in low regard, but she simply didn't expect much to come of her job search until some weeks had passed. She was startled to reopen the app and see a message asking if she would be available for a video interview by noon. Without more than a quick skimming of the who-when-where of the hiring party, she happily replied in the affirmative and hurried upstairs to her vanity to prepare: makeup, clothes, and what she thought she might say.

Just a minute before noon, she clicked the link to enter the video waiting room, checked that her specs were good, adjusted her webcam and headset, and then clicked to enter the meeting. There in the video meeting window was the face of a woman who could've been cast as Reine's sister, though the expression on her face was not anything she'd seen on Reine's, dead-flat.

"Hello, Lyrou," she began, monotone, and she pronounced the name with precision.

"Hello, it's good to speak with you..." she read the name caption in her video window, "... Sara."

Sara nodded. "So I'm going to screen-share a comprehensive explanation of the position, and we can both look at it together." Up popped in place of Sara's window a third window showing a bullet-pointed breakdown of the pay, benefits, locations, responsibilities, and other particulars: Nexéo US business operations coordinator, $80k, health & dental, maternity leave, Manhattan on-site/remote hybrid, paid-commute, paid-lunch (optional), paid-training, and a few other paids.

Lyrou looked it over in a moment of silence; Sara waited patiently. It was much the same as what she'd read about the position on the career app. There was one major addition: "It says here after two years..."

Sara began to explain, "After two years and following a review, you’d be advanced to one of these two positions: Director of Strategic Initiatives or Chief of Staff to the VP, with a commensurate raise." She highlighted a portion. "And you would begin on July 1st. Before then, you would complete an online training and onboarding program. There are assessments."

“Self-study?” Lyrou wondered.

Without blinking, Sara answered, “In part, but our onboarding staff will guide you through smoothly.”

Lyrou weighed it seriously, "And I would travel for business?"

Sara clarified, "For now you’ll only travel over the George Washington Bridge; our HQ is virtually at the East abutment. In either of these later roles you would be flown to Paris as often as needed, where our parent company is headquartered. But this wouldn't be more than once or twice a year and for a week or two at a time. Could you do that?"

"I could, and I’d save you the lodging expense." Lyrou shrugged.

Sara, a touch formal and fast-spoken, said, “If that’s your preference, you’d have much more of your travel per diem to allot elsewhere.”

“I see.” Lyrou asked the question she thought maybe she shouldn't, but needed to: "Why did you reach out to me?"

"Our preferred candidate fell through, badly, and now we’ve fallen behind, badly. À vrai dire, you're being offered this position because among applicants authorized to work in both the US and France and sufficiently fluent in both English and French, we were impressed by your education and previous work experience. But we were concerned about your gap. Can you say something about that?"

Lyrou inhaled, and inhaled again. She would be honest, "I've given myself where I'm needed until I'm not as needed there. Also, to be frank, I'm not as needed here anymore..." Lyrou held her arms out wide at her home, "... as I was when I put my career on pause. It's been a long pause, but I'm better for my so-called gap. It doesn't seem like a gap to me at all; it was a time full of experiences and challenges, fulfilling responsibilities, and building. I didn't build a business, but I built people, and I built myself. What can I say about my gap but: what gap are you talking about?"

Sara's face remained flat but for her eyes. Her eyes smiled, "Then it would be a satisfying validation of your years growing to apply yourself building with us. Don’t you think so? Formally, would you like to begin your onboarding process?"

Lyrou held her hands out as if feeling invisible rain. "Isn't this all so fast?"

Sara shook her head. "On our end, we know it can't be fast enough. We are ready to start if you're ready to join us."

Lyrou smiled emphatically. "Oui, I would like to start. Let's start."

Sara, now back in the monotone she'd begun the meeting with, but with a barely detectable optimism in her voice, said, "Welcome to our team. Then, you're going to receive an email from me within the hour, follow the instructions therein, and please be receptive and responsive to future communication. We have a lot to cover before your start date, and we’ll need to meet in person beforehand. If you have no further questions, thank you for this interview, Lyrou."

Lyrou shook her head lightly. "Merci, Sara. Have a nice day."

Lyrou exited the video meeting. Taking off her headset and putting it aside on the desk, she sat in the silence of her home for a moment. Was that real? It wasn’t one of her novels. It was real!

⚜

Evening Tuesday, June 3rd, 2025

Amina and Garin held a video call. She was alone in her hotel in Philly. He was alone in his apartment, the vacant apartment he kept in Grantwood. Amina asked, "Give me a tour. Please?"

Garin walked the tablet around the unit, giving her a quick look-around through its camera lens. "Satisfied?" he asked and sat.

Amina nodded, "You barely have it furnished."

Garin nodded, "I'm just a dude."

"Just my dude." Amina smiled and pulled her knees up under her chin such that her feet came into frame.

"Freeze. Let me see these feet." Garin leaned in, eyebrows raised.

"My feet?" Amina guffawed and instinctively covered them under her hands.

"These are the prettiest pair of pedalers I've peered upon." Garin declared.

"Stop." Amina blushed.

"You stop. I'm foot-focused as fuck right now. I'll be damned. I haven't beheld such cutesy footsies. May I?" Garin put his hands together in a pleading prayer.

Amina cocked her head like a puppy. "May you what?"

Garin mimed that he was lifting her feet, one in each hand, and gave them a couple of air kisses, right and left. "I love your feet, they're special feet."

Now submitting her feet to the lens for his enjoyment, Amina ran her fingertips up and down the dorsum of her foot, down to her toes one by one, plucking them each, poking between them, and with her opposite hand cupping and massaging her ankle bone and heel.

Garin watched his screen, "These are the feet of a habibti."

Amina let out a murmuring moan, "Mm-yeah?"

Garin pulled his cock free from his briefs and began masturbating. "I want to travel up your legs."

Amina obliged, moving the camera slowly up her shin, over her knee, along her thigh, and then rested it right at her crotch with a close view of her panties, a subtle camel-toe with a dark, damp line down the cleft.

Garin exposed his full manhood to the lens, giving Amina a clear, high-definition view of him growing erect as he pulled his skin down his shaft. "I want to put lotion on your feet and watch you rub it in. My special protein complex."

Amina articulated her feet as if modeling them, "Thank you, Garin, but now it's time to put them away."

Garin pleaded, "No. No. No. Let me see the pair until I finish. You could walk on my face with such perfect feet."

Amina folded her feet behind her, shaking her head slowly with a taunt, "Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. They have to go away for now. But I can show you another pair."

Garin stopped mid-stroke, befuddled, "Another... another pair? Of feet?"

Amina snickered, her hair falling over her face, "No! Stupid. This pair." And she unbuttoned her night shirt, pulled it open, and revealed her tits for the webcam.

Garin didn't miss a beat; he pounded his cock, and Amina watched. "Good, Garin. You miss them?" Garin watched the screen as Amina massaged her breasts and she leaned closer into frame, "They need a man to handle them... like this." She squeezed her breasts, her nipples pinched out between her fingers, and she rolled her eyes with a moan.

Garin slowed in his strokes; she was too sexy too soon.

Amina removed her night shirt completely and was before the webcam totally naked. "I can show you one more thing."

Garin didn't hesitate, "Show me around downstairs."

Amina put her fingertip to her lips, "Downstairs? You mean here?" and she touched the same fingertip to her pussy lips.

Garin nodded, "Yes. Show me."

Amina shook her head, "Nah. Not tonight. But hey, do you want to see around back?"

Garin beat his dick faster; he knew this would be the sight to take him over the edge. "Yes. Take me out back."

Amina smiled, tilted her head this way and that way as if thinking about it. "Hmmm. Well, OK." And she turned around, back to the camera, her wonderful full ass buns bare and beautiful. She gave her cheeks dozens of little tappy-taps, jiggling them.

Garin was ready to burst; he was jacking his cock with such fervor that it caused Amina to chuckle as she looked over her shoulder and saw her screen.

"Oh, you really like this pair best of the three so far, huh?" she asked.

"Yes. Yes," Garin answered, losing himself to the sight of her ass.

"Listen carefully. I'm going to show you one last thing, a bonus. And when you see it, you have to cum. I'll only let you see it for 5 cool seconds. If you miss it, that's too bad. And one more thing... if you're listening." Amina kept tapping her ass cheeks.

Garin affirmed, busily cranking his cock, "Yeah. I'm listening."

"I want you to shoot all of your cum into your palm and show it to me. I hope it's a lot. I hope I'm impressed," Amina stipulated. "Are you ready?"

Garin answered through his teeth, "Yes. Show me."

With that, Amina spread her ass cheeks by hand and pressed her anus up to the webcam so close that Garin could see its wrinkles puckering. She counted down, "5... 4... 3... 2... 1," and then removed her behind from frame, turning to sit and face him.

"Did you do as I asked, Garin?" Amina asked with anticipation.

Breathing hard, Garin held his hand to his webcam, a load of white goo slicked across his fingers and in his palm. "I kept our deal."

Amina gushed, "That's so, so much. I'm not impressed, I'm moved. All of that for me? Thank you. Really, Garin, thank you."

Garin wiped his hand off with a tissue and tossed it in the bin under his desk. "I need you here. I'm tempted to fly to Philly."

Amina shook her head. "You can have plenty of me when I come home, and I'll maybe, possibly, think about showing you what you asked to see tonight, then."

⚜

Early Evening Wednesday, June 4th, 2025

Garin noticed that Alan's room was unusually quiet. He knocked, gave it 8 seconds, and entered. He saw Alan under the blankets, head-to-toe, still sulking. Garin came over and sat on the corner at the foot of the bed. He yanked the blanket off Alan's face. Garin found that Alan was listening to music on his earbuds. He plucked one out and listened also. "What're you listening to? I've never heard this one before."

"Me neither," Alan mumbled.

"You like the newest new stuff." Garin bobbed gently to the beat.

"I don't understand people who listen to the same old songs a million times for years and years and years. I understand old music can be good; if it's new to you, it doesn't matter what year it's from. But to listen to the same thing, no matter how great it is, again and again and again and again seems... lame." Alan sighed.

"They formed memories with those songs; the songs take them back to those times and those vibes." Garin wondered to himself if this song could ever do that for Alan one day.

"I don't want music to remind me of my life; I want it to be unlike anything I ever heard," Alan said with frustration in his tone.

Garin chuckled. "Well, this is certainly that; a very sad robotic yodeler on a helicopter?"

"At least it's not a four-chord progression at 120 BPM," Alan said, now with more frustration than the topic merited.

"That it is not. Are you bummed?" Garin asked.

"Yeah," Alan confirmed.

"Info dump me." Garin tapped on Alan's knee.

"I admitted to Fiona I skipped her gymnastics competition to go bike stunting with Calvin. Now she's ghosting me." Alan sighed and sighed again.

"You agreed you would go to her gymnastics event and then you made up something to get out of it?" Garin summed it up.

"Yep-yep-yep. But I came clean even though she didn't ask. I didn't have to snitch on myself." Alan slapped his forehead.

"You told Fiona the truth to be honest, and instead of appreciating your honesty, she got pissed." Garin clarified.

Alan nodded, throwing his pillow onto the floor. "I shoulda just capped and kept the cap. How is she mad though?"

"Maybe, weirdly, sometimes the lie itself is a form of respect; the lie recognizes the other person has feelings, and you don't want to hurt them, and you don't want to lose them. Telling Fiona the truth forthwith seemed brave, but she might think it means you don't care enough about protecting her heart and keeping her to tell a fib," Garin explained.

Alan clasped his hands in frustration. "That's messed up. So cap and get cooked or tell the truth and get cooked!"

Garin nodded with a smile. "You got cooked the minute you did the deed that put you in this no-win dilemma."

"So don't do the bad thing in the first place." Alan did a silly head-exploding gesture. "Poosshh..."

"Obvious enough to blow your mind, right? But humans aren't robots; the probability of making some sort of error eventually is basically certain." Garin complicated it.

Alan shrugged. "Then flip a coin; heads cap, tails confess."

Garin thought of Lyrou then, the first time she must've had to decide to lie or to confess, which he didn't know the details of but could deduce must've happened. And he felt a pang of sorrow, to imagine her looking him in the eyes, and the coin spinning in her mind landing, then settling, heads. "Or screw the coin. Whichever you decide to do, lie or confess, let it be your reasons and your choice. Then when you face the music, you can have some solace in it that you called the tune and not fate."

"How do I get her back?" Alan cut to the real matter at hand.

"Tell her you want her back, sprinkle in some pretty aspirations for flavor, stand back, and let her decide. It's up to her now. And that's it." Garin gave the tough truth.

Alan's face morphed from a cute boyish smile to a scrunched-about-to-cry scowl. Garin leaned over and gave him a hug, messing his hair. "Whatever she decides, Alan, you'll be alright. Remember you always have tomorrow, with or without anyone, Fiona, Riona, Giona, whoever-ona. OK?"

Muffled in the hug, Alan agreed, "OK."

Garin sat up and headed out Alan's door. "Now get cleaned up in 20 minutes; we're going jogging as you agreed."

Alan regained his cute boyish smile and flopped out of bed. "Salute! Can we get donuts after?”

“No,” Garin answered flatly.

“You’ll want to after we jog; the donut seed is planted and already growing. Yummy, don’t you want donuts after a little jog? Yes, you do.” Alan came jogging down the stairs behind his dad.

⚜

Wednesday, June 4th, 2025

Over the days and nights Marc had texted Lyrou, and she’d texted back frequently. He explained that he was busy, and she took that to mean they couldn't meet. He lifted her spirit to clarify, "Non, je veux dire passer une journée entière avec moi."

She declined; she’d be a distraction, but he insisted, "Tu éclaireras toute ma journée stupide et tu verras qui je suis vraiment."

Marc woke up at dawn without an alarm; he’d trained himself to function on his body clock. He started his day with a cup of strong, black coffee from his Italian espresso machine. The aroma filled his kitchen as he skimmed through the latest issue of Excavations & Expeditions Current, then read a few pages from ‘The Myth of the Musical Matriarch’. He waited for Lyrou to call, and so she did. She was driving to meet him, and he apologized that it should be so early. He turned on his video, and she could see him drinking his coffee with his apartment and its effects as he shifted angles, walking her through, gathering his gear for the day. What she could see: his apartment in Tribeca was minimalistic but had distinct, refined touches: a Cold War-era map of Afrique-Occidentale Française on one wall, a shelf full of ethnographic texts, and a special collection of Ewe, Nzema, Akan, Ga-Dangme, Gourmantché, and Kotokoli art and masks. He explained that today, he’d be attending his weekly gumdo class at a local dojo in the Financial District. With a kiss into his phone, he said, “Soon,” and hung up.

By morning rush-hour, he was out the door of the gumdo dojo and biking across the city. His bike, a sleek, modern model with leather handlebars, cut through the shadow-and-sunbeam-banded streets of Manhattan, packed with cars swimming like salmon up a narrow stream. During his ride, he mentally reviewed his upcoming lectures or reflected on the most recent field data he'd analyzed. The ride itself gave him a moment to unwind and prepare for the busy day ahead. Once again Lyrou called, and riding no-handed, he turned on the video to show her his view; ripping past vehicles and pedestrians with ruthless speed. She begged him to go slower and be careful, to which he laughed, and then she told him she was pulling into the public parking garage where they’d agreed to meet.

Marc arrived, finding her standing by a loop bike rack. He called out to her, dismounting his bike and walking it in, “Lyrou… morning. Did you stop to eat?”

“I skipped breakfast, but I swear I’m not hungry.” They quickly kissed before he secured his bike lock to the rack, wheels and frame, then took her hand and led her. She looked awake now, as did he. His long hair, having been tousled by the wind during his ride, she tried to pat it down for him as they walked. “Better,” and they smiled to think how they clicked together so.

He and Lyrou soon arrived on foot and by elevator at his office on the top floor of the anthropology building at the legendary Violet School on the hill. His space was a mess yet functional, bookshelves packed with journals and ethnographies, a large desk scattered with research notes, and a few framed photos from his travels on the malarial Volta River. He briefly pointed to one photo that Lyrou was too far from to see clearly. “That’s my mentor, Dr. Bianchi; you might bump into him with me.” But in the hurry he didn’t really show her and she didn’t ask. Today, he explained, “we” were poring over clues collected from a recent excavation site in Tuareg Azawad; burial practices, food preparation, rites and so on.

“So, then this is where you normally are?” Lyrou sighed with satisfaction.

Marc smiled. “I chose today because you won’t have to see too much of where I normally am, actually. Marc spends four hours answering emails. Marc argues with Reviewer #3. Marc has 99 papers to grade. Marc fills out a lost reimbursement form again because the department wants documentation for a ten-dollar taxi in Ouagadougou. Marc attends a committee meeting about revisions to the undergraduate major requirements. Marc brainstorms with graduate students about their research projects; Marc offers feedback; Marc’s feedback is taken as an attack.”

Lyrou stayed with him there, and when it was time for him to give a lecture for an online course, she stayed out of frame and did her best to follow along, making of herself a bonus student. She thought then how she loved to listen to him speak; she watched him in profile, his little facial expressions, head movements, hand gestures all to convey to these interested youth the content he loved. Class dismissed, he closed his laptop, stretched, and swiveled in his chair to face Lyrou. “Don’t swear you’re not hungry now. Let me get us lunch.”

Lyrou stood patting her belly, “Oui.”

Lunchtime was his opportunity to recharge and network. Beelzebub’s Bazaar, the Corsican bistro in SoHo. The conversation was stimulating; it veered into the absurdities of dating apps, a topic he was eager to incorporate into his comedy routine, but he told Lyrou, “... to do it and be original, though, it takes a certain muse.” Lyrou pressed him to try with her, so he floated his material on how dating apps were taking humanity back to tribal matchmaking rituals: “Wodaabe bachelors line up for the young women, for Guérewol, do their Yaake dance, and essentially get swiped on.”

They ate a simple yet satisfying lunch: their sommelier poured a glass of oak-aged chardonnay paired with a classic croque-monsieur. Lyrou thought if she should tease him about this, and then took her shot, “Will you do a Yaake dance for me?”

Marc turned red for a few seconds. “I can. I can do a Yaake dance.”

Lyrou bit her fingertip and looked around at the other unsuspecting patrons as Marc stood, started swaying, taking rhythmic, stunted steps, bared his teeth, and made intense eye movements. Lyrou suppressed her laugh and grabbed his wrist to make him sit. “Enough!”

Seated, he adjusted himself and, turning red again, asked, “Which way do you swipe me?”

Lyrou swiped him away in the negative and laughed, “I’m just joking,” then swiped him the opposite way in the positive. He breathed easy, and they laughed together, “If I’d put that on my dating profile, we wouldn’t be here now.”

Lyrou giggled, shaking her head, “You would be. You’d be sitting here with a Wodaabe woman.”

After lunch, they grabbed fruity ice drinks, and she toured his campus with him. He led her to an outdoor amphitheater where a debate team was practicing; free speech and the First Amendment was their topic. Lyrou and Marc sat in the concrete theatron where they devoted an hour to brainstorming new material for his stand-up routine. He shared with her notes he’d jotted down for a bit. Marc adjusted his collar and got into stage-character, “So I hear the zoomers talking about red flags. But I'm sorta old; I know too many red flags, I mean... I notice the smallest things, and I bail out.”

"I'm afraid you'll list one that I have." Lyrou grinned.

Marc kept to the bit. “Can I tell you some you kids overlook? You won’t be triggered or whatever? She doesn’t own nail clippers. Number one, really bad; I’ll explain later. He sleeps naked. Ladies, watch that one. Is she really good at drawing? Really bad. And if a guy says he wants kids someday, but then says, ‘Oh yeah, I want a hundred-thousand kids’... I see your faces. What’s wrong with any of that? Right? Let me explain."

Lyrou puzzled over it all, "Hmm."

“She’s good at drawing, she’ll shoot you at noon because you didn’t wash the dishes, and you’ll be standing there full of holes, hand still reaching for your sidepiece; too slow. He wants a hundred-thousand kids? That guy’s a fly. Swat him and get out, ladies. Sleeping naked is fine, but sleeping entails other things: sleepwalking, sleep-eating, sleep-getting-into-bed-with-your-guests. This happens. And if she doesn’t own nail clippers, she’s borrowing someone else’s. That’s deep intimacy. This woman is already seeing somebody. Get out of there!” Marc raised his voice in alarm, the act.

Lyrou rested her smiling face between her hands. “I didn’t see any of those coming. Bravo. But…”

Marc's eyes widened, and then his smile also. “But what? But what?”

“Can I ask you a question about your jokes?” Lyrou seemed serious, cocking an eyebrow.

Marc shrugged, “Of course.”

“Do you not have any Black people jokes, or are you afraid to tell them in front of me?” Lyrou really wondered.

Marc grinned and shook his head slowly, “You want to hear my one Black people joke?”

Lyrou nodded, “I think so. Don’t hold back.”

“Alright…” Marc got back into form, as if he were standing on stage with a big audience, “Quick show of hands, any Whities here living in a Black neighborhood? The hood?”

Marc pretended to count hands in his imaginary crowd, “Yeah, yeah, hands up. Don’t be shy. I see you. I see my people in the audience, my glow-in-the-dark people. I can’t not see you. Keep those milky hands up for a second. White folks always comply when the police ask them to hold their hands up; I always wanted to do that. I just need… a census.”

Lyrou began to laugh a bit. Marc continued, “Okay. You can put your hands down. But I remember you. Because here’s the thing, there are only a few kinds of White people you ever see living in Black neighborhoods. You know who I’m talking about. Soviet or Balkan immigrants. Hasidic Jews. Elderly Whites. Gentrifiers. Black family-havers.”

Lyrou mentally tallied each archetype, “That tracks.”

Marc unfurled his hands out, palms up for the final bit, “And then there’s the last category. Which is registered sex offenders. Now, you. Yeah. You; young White male not-in-a-tracksuit, not in a flannel, not-in-cuffed slim pants or a beanie, no high fade or sharp lineup, no side-locks. You said you lived in the hood, so come on. Which one are you then?”

Lyrou clasped her hands together in one loud single clap. “That’s pretty funny, but what if you don’t get a guy there who fits the mark?”

“That can work even better. I did this one a couple times, and both times the guy stood up frantically, laughingly trying to prove he was one or the other legit White-man-in-the-hood stereotypes. Dude took off his cycling shoes and held them over his head to show the whole audience.”

“That’s so bad and so funny, poor man!” Lyrou blurted.

“You have to be there when I deliver it on stage; this place is called The Side Splitter in the West Village,” to which she nodded that she’d like to be there if she could.

Taking her hand and helping her up, he said, “Back to the serious Skirball grindset,” then led her to a lecture hall, where she sat up in the very back, and Marc gave a presentation to a couple dozen students on the anthropology of humor, diving into the social functions of laughter, the role of humor in developing societies that had not yet attained widespread internet access, and how comedy had so often acted as a tool for social change and how that’s why establishments fear being laughed at. Lyrou was taken with how he deftly handled questions, but was then sure she saw multiple girls fawning over him. At first she found it cute, but then, forgetting herself, she fixated on a pair of girls from up and behind as they repeatedly raised their hands and stole Marc’s attention with question after question, digression after digression. Her eyes bore into them; young, single, free. With the time almost up, she quietly left the lecture hall and sat outside on a bench by the stairwell.

The students came out in a procession of acne, braces, lazy attire, hoodies with thumb holes, foam-rubber clogs, backpacks, stupid slang, and two or three real responsibilities between the bunch. The pair of girls who had been peppering Marc came out last, chit-chatting as they passed elbow-to-elbow, one of them lugging her enormous boobs with each step and the other with a never-declined face card. The bless’ed ones exchanged a quick glance with Lyrou, the girls’ smiles dropping for a second before walking past on their way. After a minute, Marc exited, finding Lyrou seated, looking into her lap. “Hey, Lyrou?”

She looked up at him and stood. “I had to use the restroom, and when I got back, your students were coming out.” She’d try to recover her mood as they left the campus together.

Marc wanted to introduce Lyrou to some friends. They grabbed a bus. It was quiet and so very nice, their thighs touching together as they sat on the bus. They stepped off at a corner stop just outside The Plump Swine, a gastropub in the West Village. The group consisted of young professors, writers, and some old friends from his “Le Marais days”. Marc introduced Lyrou, and she smiled, answering them that they’d just begun dating. Over plates of deviled eggs and roasted chicken, they swapped stories from their respective travels; one of his environmentalist friends had just returned from a research trip to the Amazon, while a surgeon had spent six months cutting open and stitching up grateful farmers in a hospital in rural Yunnan.

The surgeon explained a book he was writing, The Hospital Cartel: Inside the Takeover of America’s Institutions of Health, summarizing it to the table’s intense interest. “In the 90s, the biggest hospital players began consolidating and closing smaller competitors: rural, inner-city, and small-town hospitals. They colluded, and I’ve compiled the communications. They brought in government too: certificate-of-need laws, the Affordable Care Act in the form it took, Medicare and Medicaid payment rules; all squeezing small and independent hospitals. Now it’s centralized, and our national health outcomes have been set back decades.” He pointed to Lyrou. “Anything like this unfolding in France?”

Lyrou said, “C’est impossible. Central regulation is too strong, local regulation is stronger, private hospital groups are viewed with suspicion, and there is little market-based reimbursement.”

The surgeon nodded deeply, “That’s exactly what I thought, and I’m including a chapter that compares our system to those in France, Canada, and South Korea.”

“You have their communications, but can you publish them?” Lyrou doubted.

“That’s the rub! I dumped a publisher for telling me to let their lawyers censor it. In the public interest, I’ll find a way,” the surgeon swore.

Marc smiled, gratified that his date could engage his big-brained doctor friend. The conversation shifted back to Lyrou, being new to the group, and she answered the “What do you do?” question with “I'm glad you asked today and no sooner; up until a job interview two days ago I'd have answered gainfully unemployed and that I’ve gotten by on investments. Now I'm delighted to announce I've been brought onto a Manhattan-Paris-based firm called Nexéo."

Marc's friends raised their glasses, "To your new position. Cheers."

Lyrou giddily toasted to that, "Very much so. Cheers."

And that provoked the environmentalist’s date, a legacy media news associate editor, to delicately point her finger and cock her eyebrow, speaking in an elongated guessing tone. “You’re giving Wharton... am I on?” to which Lyrou smiled and shook her head, happy for the compliment from the other woman at the table, “Allston Biz,” prompting the subtlest satisfied shift in Marc’s posture and smile.

The sky reddening as the sun called curtains, Lyrou and Marc took the subway back.

With Marc and Lyrou standing next to each other on the last subway car, she turned her back to him and pressed her ass against his leg. Marc kept his eyes on the other passengers, some asleep, some busy on their phones, and a few pretending not to notice anything. He raked his fingers along her cheeks, gently pulling her fabric up. The rocking of the subway car caused her ass to rub against him until he had a prominent bulge in his pants. Noticing what had grown there against her bum, she discreetly reached a hand back, carefully steadying herself by her opposite hand against the grab bar. She ran her fingertips along the length of it, pleased by how long it went before reaching the meaty knot that represented his glans. Using her body to block anyone's view and seeing she had time before the next stop exposed them to boarding passengers, she quietly, blindly undid his belt, with a bit of help from him, and slid her hand down his trousers to get a full grab hold of him. The crotch of his pants loaded with himself and her hand. He couldn't resist running his hands along her waist and then up under her breast. At that point it was clear some passengers had caught glances and caught on; a young coquette downtown indie woman was watching most unabashedly, side-eyeing Lyrou and Marc groping one another almost as often as she averted her gaze. At one point she raised her phone and aimed it at the inappropriately behaved couple, probably to snap a shot of them to send to her girls or boyfriend. Marc had to restrain himself from pulling Lyrou's breasts out in front of everybody; Lyrou was able to work her wrist so expertly in confined space that he was ever closer to creaming his pants... until the next stop was upon them and she slipped her hand out, allowing him to buckle himself up.

Resurfacing in the lights of the night, he walked her back to her car in the parking garage, their hands swinging together down the sidewalk, happy frequent mutual glances. They looked and felt too good and exchanged several kisses as they walked, then several more with greater intensity just before she got into her car to go. He stood aside, hands in his pockets as she backed it out; she laughed as their gazes locked through the windshield; he put his thumbs and fingers together to make a heart shape over his chest.

⚜

Morning Thursday, June 5th, 2025

It started out lovely; she was in one of Paulo’s hole-in-the-wall apartments, or a kind of composite of them, fully and mutually nude on a blowup mattress. They were making out, getting warmed up. It was the original Paulo she had loved; it was as if the Paulo she broke up with had never existed, as if the break-up had never happened, so much so that she was unconscious of any Ava or black-painted fingernails or eyebrow piercings or any of that. It wasn’t lovely, it was hot.

Paulo's body had come home to her, and she was so happy to have it back; his smell was as pungently Paulo as if he were real. His voice, smooth-clipped, with softened consonants and a rebellious cadence, was as clear as if he were speaking into her ear as she slept. Her hands and legs caressed him, running over his skin with fervor up and down him, not taking a second for granted. She murmured in her slumber, incomprehensible if anybody had been listening, but in her dream she was desperately pleading, "You're back? You're staying with me?" She played with his hair, she looked at his tattoos she had memorized, all just as they had ever been. She found his dick with one hand and kneaded his sack with her opposite hand. She handled his glans and delivered it right into her entrance, sliding him in, and she rocked atop him. His hands opened, fingers splayed, sliding up her waist, over her ribs, and onto her breasts, squeezing. Paulo was inside her again, and she whimpered audibly into her pillow. Dream Paulo fucked like real Paulo, with passion and something to prove. Fucking was for Paulo a performance; fucking was his reputation, his myth; his fuck was Paulo himself! And so Paulo gave Lyrou himself, and Lyrou took him all. She fed her breast to him, and he gave her nipples the tongue play he had in reality. He took her wrists and waist and handled her, placing her body where and how he wanted her, so that he could thrust up into her with a beat, to a beat, beat-beat-beat into her groin from below! Her body reverberated like music; Paulo was playing her body like an instrument. She sang with moans, pouring down his rod; she was beginning to orgasm from Paulo, the reliable sort of orgasm she had come to expect with Paulo, his signature, and she had missed it so!

And then Paulo froze and stared in terror. Lyrou turned to see what he saw; it was Garin. He was standing in the doorway, and he was holding the long musket from his office display case. In the dream, the absurdity of that went unquestioned, and Lyrou hurried to explain herself as if her entire real-life confession and their real-life open marriage arrangement had never happened. This was the Garin she imagined and feared would discover her in flagrante, from those days when her affairs and flings were still unknown to him. This was a violently jealous Garin, and in his eyes she saw pure hurt and rage.

Then this nightmare Garin spoke, “I’ll give you a choice, Paulo.”

Paulo put on his bravest face. “I eat choices for breakfast.”

Out of thin air, Garin produced Lyrou’s garden shears and tossed them into the bed at Paulo’s feet. “Trim your sausage and eggs off, down to the base, stem and root, and I’ll spare your life.”

Lyrou cried out in such shock that she whimpered in her slumber, “Non!”

Paulo took the shears in hand. “Do you think I, Paulo, am too much of a coward to cut off my own güebo!?”

With that, Garin prepared his musket; biting open the paper cartridge, priming the pan with a little powder, closing the frizzen, pouring the rest of the powder and the paper-wrapped ball down the muzzle, drawing the ramrod from beneath the barrel, ramming the cartridge firmly to the breech, returning the ramrod to its channel, cocking the lock and aiming it squarely at Paulo’s heart.

Lyrou turned to Paulo to throw herself over him, so that Garin would not fire and risk hitting her, but her paramour had vanished totally. She turned back to look at Garin, and she found herself looking directly down the dark barrel of his musket. She saw a white flash; she heard an impossibly loud crack, and she nearly jumped out of her own body in waking.

In the bathroom mirror, Lyrou looked into her eyes and huffed out a little laugh; self-pity but also some resolution. She had to find out, today, and so she would go where she'd rather not go.

Lyrou visited Garin's mother's grave, empty-handed. She made a mental note of her date of death. Then, knowing Garin would be at a meeting in Manhattan, Mel, Terry, Wayne, and others with him, she went right for his office. Passing the secretary, she excused her intrusion, "I left my..." she whispered, ".. unmentionables in Garin's office. I don't want to embarrass him; if someone else found them, he might kill me. He might kill me if he knew they were left in there at all." The secretary, with understanding, produced a key and hurried to allow Lyrou into Garin's office. Lyrou said, "Merci," and she closed the door behind her, locking it.

Lyrou went straight for the safe, stopping only briefly to eye and huff at Garin’s musket display, and entered his mother's date of death. It didn't open. Garin wouldn't have lied when he told her that was the combination, but he would've changed it. Oh, what could he have changed it to? She tried his mother's birthday. Fail. She tried birthdays for everyone in the family; Alan, Penny, herself, Garin... fail, fail, fail, fail. "Bordel de merde..." Anniversaire? Fail.

She took a moment to think, then to intuit, to pull the combination from the cosmos. Could it be? She entered the date Garin first learned she had cheated. 061823. Fail.

She put her face into her hands, and then, as peek-a-boo removed them, ah! Right! Leap year. 061923. Open.

Lyrou gasped; she set her eyes upon the contents. There in a little tin tray was his wedding ring. She looked; she didn't touch. There was that World’s #1 Zaddy mug; more afraid of her than her of it. There was a thick file of unknown contents. Then there were a pair of envelopes, also of unknown contents. She took a photo with her phone so that she could return everything exactly to its present position and placement.

Next, she removed the file for inspection, but she accidentally bumped the mug with her wrist. She gently nudged it back into its precise place, and removed the file with better care. In it she found an unauthorized biography of his first woman, her story reading like a blue-collar elegy. Did he feel sorry for her, guilt for leaving her, did he have plans with her? Did he hire a PI because he doesn’t trust her? How did he take this report? Had he ever put a PI on Lyrou herself? If not, why this woman and not his wife? The questions spiraled up higher and higher, and she didn’t have time for them now. She put the file back inside the safe; there was more to look at.

She took out the envelopes, light and easy, and saw that they were unopened. While she couldn’t open them or hope to shine her phone flashlight through for a read, she could see they had come from ‘Accurate Genomics Laboratories’ in Denver. She knew at once one of these envelopes was for Penny, the other for Alan. Lyrou inhaled deeply, inhaled again, again, held it in. Control. OK. OK. OK. Think about that later, not here, not here. Her hands shaking, she placed the envelopes back in the safe exactly as they had been.

She found at the back of the safe a single sheet of paper, and she gently removed it to read. Handwritten, it was dense and neat. Leaning her head against the window, she began:

“Why Did Lyrou Cheat?

1. Universal Human Nature

Clause Type: Latent Universal Clause

Everyone is sexually attracted to people other than their spouse. But unlike most people, the following factors were in effect. The biological clause is immutable: sexual attraction beyond exclusivity is default, not defect. Most suppress it or rarely get the opportunity to indulge it without repercussion. She chose not to suppress it when the opportunity presented. This isn’t unique, only enacted. My mistake was assuming suppression was mutual.

2. No Breadcrumbs

Vector Condition: Clause Friction absent; high Concord Latency exploited

She was confident she could get away with it undiscovered. She identified a flaw in enforcement architecture: no audits, no anomaly detection. She read the system and exploited the latency window before mutual understanding synced. Risk-adjusted, she moved forward.

3. Libertine

Latent Contract Misalignment

She regarded it as a victimless act; she was not hurting her spouse so long as he was unaware. In her internal schema, undetected infidelity causes no injury. Harm only exists if seen. Our moral agreements diverged without documentation. She operated on Strategic Ambiguity Nodes, embedded in the silence between vows.

4. Typical Parisian, Her National Pastime

Cultural Overlays in the Latent Contract

Americans conflate transparency with intimacy; Europeans prioritize autonomy and privacy; marital fidelity is aspirational, not an imperative to a binding covenant. Her family and cultural background normalized marital infidelity. Her cultural substrate normalized what mine stigmatized and moralized. I mistook fluency for allegiance. I failed to adjust for latent cultural clause variants, unseen fault lines, and I got delta gap, latent contract misalignment, fundamental clause divergence.

5. It's Hard Being Gorgeous

Behavioral Exposure Multiplier

Being so beautiful, she frequently got romantic and sexual attention from men. Her beauty increased incoming vectors. Clause Friction scaled exponentially. High-frequency temptation is a structural risk. I failed to engineer around it.

6. Idle Hands, Devil's Playground

Governance Erosion & Ambient Clause Drift

She had plenty of spare time and alone time. Unstructured time breeds semantic drift. With no KPIs, no shared mission, the governance eroded. Entropy entered the agreement space.

7. As Before, So After

Contractual Precedent: High-Risk Behavior Patterns

She was promiscuous before marriage, and promiscuity is a hormone-high habit that dies hard if it ever does. Her pre-marital behavioral portfolio showed recursive promiscuity. No clause reset occurred post-marriage. Recursive Negotiation Loop persisted, behavior unmodified despite a new agreement.

8. Retribution

Proxy Clause Activation & Boundary Creep

She justified it that her husband had cost her the life she really wanted (a career built on her hard-earned Ivy League education) and he was willfully deaf to her pleas for compromise, so she decided she would live as she wanted within the housewife mom life he relegated her to and in her reckoning of it he had no right to object given it was his fault. Her career was a proxy clause, unspoken but critical. I failed to give it weight. The boundary around marital exclusivity was expanded in retaliation. This was Clause Drift weaponized.

9. Darwinian Mating Logic

Latent Biological Override Clause

After having a child or two by the same man, many women are genetically inclined to diversify their mate selection so as to increase the odds that some of their progeny will propagate, per reproductive strategy. A subconscious override via arginine vasopressin receptor genes like AVPR1A RS3 and dopamine receptor genes like DRD4-7R. Post-reproduction mate diversification is embedded in evolutionary logic. It doesn’t excuse breach, but may explain silent compulsion.

10. Stuck

Agreement Debt & Fail-over Protocol Activation

She wanted to leave her husband, but she had become financially dependent on him, she had children with him, and because she still had positive feelings for him, she feared being unable to undo such a final decision as divorce. She couldn’t leave outright; too many legacy interdependencies (children, finances, sentiment). The affair was a fail-over protocol: alternative fulfillment system within a constrained architecture.

11. Novelty, Thrill, Transgression

Obligation Drift & Concord Model Breakdown

She wants difference, drama, experiences, interactions, and adventure in her life. Her affairs break the sameness of her plain vanilla good wife daily dullness. Monotony calcified the agreement. She sought external asymmetry to restore dynamism. The core structure no longer offered novelty. The Concord Model failed under thrill-seeking load.

12. Genuine Attachment to Paramours

Vector Misalignment & Covenant Drift

These other men are legitimately interesting, endearing, and so she develops bonds with them that are not merely no-strings interchangeable games. The attention they give her and the emotional investment she's put into them is heavy. They are serious to her, and she can't give it all up like these men never mattered to her, as toys one throws away. Worse, if she did stop her affairs, she would be overcome with regret at what she's missing out on, what she's foregone, even what she's forsaken. This was no casual breach. Emotional clauses realigned toward others. She established shadow agreements, multi-vector, emotionally redundant systems.

13. The Same Formulaic Reason as All Unfaithful Wives

Decay of emotional attachment to her husband + attention from another man = affair. Simple, that’s the story as old as Helen of Troy. She was running on buttered feet down a water-slide with banana peels strewn over it; anyone would slip.

Reasons Ungiven or Unapparent:

1. Bad Husband

Counter-party Pathology Index: Low

Her husband may have misunderstood her, been impatient, been preoccupied, or non-receptive to her wishes and feelings at times... but overall he's a good husband and father; a loving provider with no severe flaws. Handsome, affluent, intelligent, funny, attentive, and much else... her husband really checks the boxes. No substantial behavioral defects recorded. Self-audit shows consistent performance across emotional, financial, sexual, and social categories. Agreement failure not attributable to partner defect.

2. Filling a Hole

No Existential Deficit Detected

One could say that she must be missing something. She has no career, she has little relationship with her father, she's been unmoored from her home country, et cetera. But there's little indication that she cheats on her husband to fill any of those absences. They may furnish resentments or rationalizations, but the affairs are not attempts to replace what's missing. She has much in her life besides her paramours from which to derive fulfillment; these other men add color and music to her life, but they're not making her whole. If anything, this second version of herself jeopardizes her self-image and self-worth. She wasn’t empty; she was restless. Her life was structurally sufficient. The affairs are not repair operations, but experience augmentations.

3. Sexual Incompatibility

Sexual KPIs Met or Exceeded

Her husband demonstrates with her and other women that he is neither selfish, impotent, nor inferior in sex. He initiates with her, and she orgasms with him; what's more, she initiates with him, and he's earnest in being more than happy with her appearance and performance. She didn't cheat because her husband sucks in the sack. Frequency, satisfaction, mutual enthusiasm all within acceptable range. Sexual clause was not breached by failure. It was simply not exclusive in practice.

4. Revenge Sex

Timeline Contradiction

Until he learned of her philandering, and even then never without her permission and knowledge, her husband never cheated on her. She's not stepping outside for sex because her husband did it first. No provocation. No retaliatory symmetry. Her actions were independent, initiated without external incitement. This wasn't war. It was private policy.

5. Look at Me

High Covertness Indicates No Signaling Intent

She took great meticulous care not to be caught. She went over a decade undiscovered in her flings and affairs. When her husband came close to discovering her secrets, she maneuvered and made it through by the skin of her teeth. She most definitely did not want to be seen by her husband in a gambit for his attention. Indeed, she expected he'd divorce her if he ever found out, not heap on more love and attention. She implemented operational security. This was not a cry for attention. She was building a parallel structure, not a spectacle.

6. Confused

High Self-Insight Index

While the adulteress is torn, she is not confused. Nobody deceived or misled her, and unlike many women who cheat, she hasn't mistaken her paramours' relations with her for truer love than her husband has for her. She is adamant that her husband is her home and, in the end, dares them both to search for their soulmates, sure that there are no better matches out there. Her worldview is internally consistent. She has no delusion of higher love from her paramours. Her clarity makes the betrayal sharper, not softer.

7. Fear of Missing Out

Not Compensatory, But Expansive

Only so if one means she's afraid of missing out on more men, as she has already had many. In her eyes, every attractive man interested in her is a potential experience she would regret missing out on. But she is not a woman who entered marriage having had few experiences or few romances and now feels entitled to those she missed. This is not a woman denied her Rumspringa. She's holding onto option value.

Why I Stay”

Lyrou stopped. She stared at the subtitle before turning the page over to find the following;

“What can’t I divorce? I made an agreement. She broke it. I’m released from it. But it was a primary contract, and I have a collateral contract behind it, not contingent on the validity or performance of the first. Not an agreement with her, but with myself. I agreed with myself that I would love her unconditionally forever. If she divorced me, it would still stand; I would love her after she divorced me. A contract beyond breach. That’s inhuman; I’m human, and so I can’t keep to inhuman ideals. How is this collateral contract dissolved? I get out of it because I decide to get out of it. There, done. That’s what she would do. That’s how she exists. That’s how and why she cheats. She decides to. It’s that easy for her because she’s free. I’d be better with someone who is unfree and bound to something like I am. But I could never love someone who isn’t free because I need to love a woman unconditionally. What is an unconditional love if the beloved is unable to enter any condition? Ersatz love. I “cheated” on her in imitation of her freedom, but I asked and got her permission first. Another agreement. I could never really cheat; I could never really do what I decide to in violation of terms I’ve signed my name to. If I did, then what good would be my name? I would then have a worthless name like Lyrou, a beautiful name.”

Lyrou finished it. She stared at nothing. She touched her face to feel that she was still herself. She heard the sounds of office workers passing outside his door. She had to go. She took a scan of both sides of his document with her phone, saving it so she could, if she dared, read it again another day. She placed the document back inside the safe. But as she did, she found stuffed in there also a pair of tightly packed tough blue fabrics. She pulled one of them out only enough to read the print: BASE Jump System. She thought a moment and was reminded of what Penny had feared. She slid the chute back in as it had been. Then, shutting the safe door and messing the combo, she stood and went out. To the secretary as she passed on her way to the elevator, "I found it. Merci."

⚜