I travel a lot for work. Not by choice, mind you. It's the nature of what I do. In what can only be described as failing forward, I ended up as our company's chief location analyst. We're a large -now global- retail operator with locations in 17 countries, not counting the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Our expansion has been methodical, and maybe that's why I am where I am. I have never been a quick decision-maker, and I like to know everything I can before making a choice, both personal and professional. They entrust me with more than they should, but so far, none of our stores have had to close due to weak sales, and almost all of them are still seeing year over year growth. And as long as that continues, I'll continue to do what I do.

Two years ago, the c-suite decided that Asia was our next big market, but instead of jumping into the deep end and opening up a flagship store in mainland China, they wanted to test the waters in Vietnam. They sent me, despite my almost zero experience in that part of the world, to scout potential markets and locations for our first store on the other side of the planet. I was given a healthy expense account, a translator, a car service, and two weeks to develop a short list. I helped make arrangements at home for my wife to have a little extra support while I was gone, and then, on a chilly Tuesday morning in October, I boarded a flight to Hanoi.

Being in country for the first time is always an experience. It takes a lot of time just to learn the cultural tendencies, let alone identify a location that meets corporate requirements AND fits squarely within the framework of a foreign citizen's everyday life. My two weeks there gave me more stories, wonder, and hangovers than I can count, but it was the last night before flying home that changed everything.

My translator and corporate liaison decided to have a team dinner to celebrate the beginning of our working relationship in Vietnam. We went out for an incredible meal at a local restaurant. It wasn't white table cloth, and that was the point. We ate like kings of the country, and half of what was brought out to us was brand new to me both in look and flavor. We drank a lot of beer, and by the time we pushed back from the table, we were full to the top. The restaurant was only blocks from the hotel, and in my drunken gluttony, I insisted on walking back. We said our goodbyes and tentatively scheduled my next trip back to finalize the location in a few months' time.

Staggering down the street, happy and smiling, I somehow remembered I was out of toothpaste, so I ducked into what I thought was a local bodega to grab a tube to keep my teeth clean for the next 36 hours until I was home. I mumbled 'hello' in Vietnamese to the store clerk -one of the only words I managed to learn- and strolled down a small aisle where I could see some toiletries hanging. I grabbed a small box that looked close enough to Crest and turned back up the next aisle to check out.

As I walked I glanced at the shelves next to me and stopped in my tracks. There were bottles of what looked like aspirin, only the front had pictures of busty women and couples in various states of arousal. As my eyes started to focus, the whole aisle seemed devoted to enhancement and male and female libido drugs. I picked up a bottle with a particularly wild scene on the front and looked closer at the pills inside. They appeared to be herbal, and I chuckled, thinking that if anything was universal, it was man's constant desire to be even hornier than they already are.

'No work,' said a voice from upfront.

It was the store clerk, an older Vietnamese man. He stepped from behind the counter and shuffled towards me.

'No. I was just curious, saw the picture and wanted to see...'

'No work. This better,' he said, taking the bottle from my hand and handing me a dark green bottle from a lower shelf.

It had a worn, brown label, and it felt heavier than it looked.

'No, really, I'm not...'

'This old medicine. Make strong. Animal,' he said with half a smile.

It was not the way I'd heard anything like that described. I looked down at the bottle again and realized I didn't have time to debate things in broken English.

'How much?' I asked.

'Twenty U.S.,' the storekeeper said. He took the bottle and my toothpaste and shuffled back up front.

Twenty dollars wasn't a lot, and maybe it was a lot to him, and since I was on an expense account anyway, who cares. I pulled out my wallet and handed him my corporate card.

'Cash,' he said, pushing my card back in my hand.

While not ideal, I wasn't in the state of mind to argue. I fished in my wallet and found a 20-dollar bill that I hadn't had converted into their currency. I gave it to him. He smiled.

'How much for the toothpaste?' I asked, tapping the box on the table.

'All $20.'

'Oh,' I said, wondering if he had rounded up, or down, or simply made up a number he wanted in his pocket. 'Thank you.'

I turned to leave, and just as I was pushing the door open, the store keeper spoke again.

'Take careful. Man and woman. Only with time. Last three days.'

'Great! Thanks again,' I said, having no idea what he meant.

I wandered back to the hotel and up to my room. I brushed my teeth and got ready for bed. Just before I turned the lights off, I took one last look at the bottle. The label read 'Con Vât'. I managed a small laugh and tossed it into my suitcase. At the very least, it would be a souvenir from my first venture into Asia.

Three months later, my due diligence came due. The corporate folks liked what I had found and settled on two sites, giving me the option to negotiate hard on one and close another at or near to the asking price. They felt both would be great fits, and they were far enough apart to be their own markets, once they were both opened. I was put on the schedule for a second visit in six weeks to finalize all the contracts and bring both properties under our banner. Of course, we wouldn't own the land. Vietnam doesn't allow foreign ownership of property. But we would have an incredibly strong, long-term lease agreement, which for us, was fundamentally the same thing.

I got home from work with a bottle of bubbles in my hand, gifted to me by the CEO's office, and planned on pulling the cork as soon as it was cold. It was Friday after all.

'Honey, I'm home!' I said, with as much 1950s TV husband persona as I could muster.

'I'm in the kitchen, of course,' shouted Lydia, my wife, in a halfhearted attempt to sound like a domesticated housewife.

We had been married for 21 years, and our home life was easy. Both our boys were off at college, the oldest finishing up his senior year and the younger in his sophomore season. Things were regular, or as regular as empty nest life can be. I had just turned 51, and she was about to turn 49. As you can imagine, our sex life wasn't what it used to be, not that it ever was much of anything at all. Like all couples, we started out hot and heavy, but time, work, life, and kids slowly turned daily romps in the bedroom into weekly, then monthly, then whenever it was convenient, which seemed more never than whenever. I half hoped the boys checking out of the house would've given us more freedom to find a rhythm again, but it only gave us more room to do everything but.

I kissed her on the cheek as she turned from the stove and gave her playful slap on the behind.

'Champagne? What's the occasion?' she asked, as I shoved it into the freezer.

'The Vietnam venture,' I said. 'Everyone is really happy about where we're going and the potential there. Jason brought this by my office as a thank-you. He said the board was impressed with our speed.'

I looked her over as I spoke. You could say she dressed conservatively, but it was more plain. This outfit was a riff on her usual theme. A long-sleeved green sweater with a white undershirt, tight enough to show her 36C breasts, but not form-fitting enough to be sexy, a black pair of pants, fitted, but with room to move, and a pair of dark brown flats. Her black hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail, and her skin was starting to lose a bit of its usual tan from the summer sun. However plain she seemed in dress, she kept her figure up, which at her age, was no small feat.

'You must've really nailed the site then,' she said. 'I know other projects have gone a lot faster than this one. I remember you being frustrated that it had to go back to committee, right?'

'Yeah,' I said. 'But ultimately, they wanted to debate whether to open two instead of one, and in which order. Their forecasts allowed for a little wiggle room in capital expenses, and the two prime sites together were under budget for the anticipated costs. They're sending me back in 6 weeks to lock it all down, but I should only be gone for a week this time. Most everything has already been finalized.'

I took a deep breath. She was making her chicken pasta, one of our family favorites. It was comfort food, and for something so simple, it smelled and tasted delicious.

'Another exotic trip for you,' she said. 'Must be nice getting paid to travel the world. Speaking of which, I was cleaning out the cabinets in the bathroom of expired medication. What in the world is this?'

She reached across the counter, grabbed something, and tossed it to me. I caught it and looked down. Con Vât.

'Ha,' I said, shaking the bottle. 'Sex pills, or something like that. I had to buy them while getting toothpaste in Hanoi.'

'HAD to buy them, eh?' said Lydia, her eyebrow raised as she stirred the sauce into the pasta.

'It's a long story, but the clerk was insistent. He saw me pick up a bottle with a picture of a couple having sex on it, and he thought I was looking for enhancement pills or something.'

'What were you doing looking at that bottle in the first place?' Lydia fired back, with a tinge of suspicion in her voice.

For all that she had been as a wife, mother, and friend, she remained largely conservative on issues of morality, One of her favorite sayings to our boys was: 'It's hard to be tempted when you avoid the temptation.' She wasn't a prude, by any means, but she wouldn't stand for anything that felt beyond the line of simple reason. Honestly, I was grateful for it at times. She was always a compass when I needed it, even if it meant our boundaries were narrower than I would prefer.

'Honey, it had a picture of two people having sex on it. And I was on the same aisle as aspirin and antacids. Wouldn't you be curious?'

'Not curious enough to pick it up.'

'Well, the store clerk was quick to take it out of my hands and hand me this instead,' I said, holding up the bottle.

'Did you ask what it was? Oh god, Paul, you haven't taken any, have you?'

'When was the last time we had sex for more than five minutes, honey? I think you would've known if I had taken it.'

'Maybe it's just herbs. All those things are just placebo anyway, or some very shady stuff. You've seen the news about people ODing on gas station supplements, right?' she said, pointing the spoon at me.

'It's a novelty. A souvenir. Look, I'll show you,' I said, twisting the top.

In all honesty, things were so busy when I got back from the first trip that I put the bottle in my side of the cabinet and completely forgot about it. Now I was actually curious, and on the defensive. I needed this to come to some sort of resolution that didn't require a week's worth of explaining and apologies. The champagne was probably cold by now.

I pulled off the top and found the inside stuffed with raw cotton, or something akin to it. I pulled out a wad and tapped the jar into my hand. Three pills came out, though there were at least twenty or so more inside the bottle. It was hard to tell. I put two of them back and held one out under the oven light.

It was a greenish, brownish disaster of a thing. Whatever image you have dirty swamp water, this looked like a dried version of it that had been pressed into a pill form.

'Is that hair,' my wife said, tapping it with her nail.

I put on my reading glasses to get a better look. The pill appeared to be a mixture of dried root and some leaves. I counted at least three different things on the surface, but its shape looked crafted by someone smashing everything into a form. I smelled it.

'Whoa,' I said. 'Smell this.' I handed it out to her. It was somewhere between ginger and sweet potatoes and licorice.

'Absolutely not. That's nothing a human should ever consume.'

'Well, he did say something about an animal, I think.'

'Who did? This mysterious store clerk who just so happened to sell you toothpaste and sex pills on your solo trip to Vietnam?'

I could tell Lydia was growing ever more wary. I had never cheated on her, and I was put out by her insinuation that this was anything other than the typical sort of thing that happens in countries where English isn't as widely known and drunk Americans decide they can't go a night without brushing their teeth.

'Did you see that it was unopened? This is just a bottle of Chinese medicine. Some sort of local herbs sold to people like me who get trapped in a situation and don't know the language.'

'Why not just buy the toothpaste and leave the bottle?' she said as she scooped pasta into two of our large dinner bowls.

'Because I'm the foreigner. WAS the foreigner. I wanted to be nice. I didn't need to cause a scene and I was just trying to get home after dinner.'

'Were you drunk?' she asked. She took the bowls and breezed by me without making eye contact.

'Does that make it better if I was?' I said.

Honestly, these were the moments I hated and dreaded. In any other relationship, this would be mildly funny. Maybe the wife would make a joke, maybe demand that I take one, anything to control the situation and score a little point in the win column. Not with Lydia. Her limits on what was considered funny or tolerable stopped well short of anything pushing PG-13.

'No. But I would at least understand it better. The why, that is. Why you thought it was a good idea to buy these....whatever they are...in a foreign country.'

'Sometimes there is no good why, Lydia. It's just a moment that comes and goes. I'm not sure I would have left with anything but the toothpaste if I hadn't picked up that first bottle.'

'Exactly,' she said, making a point to rattle the silverware drawer a bit more than usual.

'Well,' I said, not sure what was coming next, 'what if I take one now? What if this works? Then maybe all of this is some sort of serendipity.'

'Paul,' she said, finally making eye contact again while sitting down, 'what would that prove? That you're now taking something illicit and dangerous because it might make you horny? Do you really need drugs or herbs or whatever THAT is to be turned on?'

There it was. Of course. This wasn't at all about the pills. It was about needing pills in order to get hard for her. This was about age and feeling desired. We'd been here before. A lot. I should've seen it coming an ocean away.

'Honey, no. I don't need anything like this. I didn't buy it for need. If anything, it was funny to me at the time, and like I said, I was doing it to get out of this worn-out Vietnamese bodega before midnight. You're already attractive enough for me.'

She softened, took a bite of pasta and sighed.

'What about that champagne?' she said.

After pulling the cork and pour two glasses, I handed her one and kissed her on the lips.

'I'm sorry. This whole thing was stupid,' I said, taking a sip from my glass.

She smiled and then winked.

'Eat your pasta,' she said. 'And don't forget your pill.'

I was stunned. Did she want me to take it? After all that? I still had it rolling in my hand. I looked down. Maybe it would work, maybe it wouldn't, but at least I could use it as a pretext to get lucky, if I played my cards right. I smiled back.

'Yes ma'am,' I said and popped the pill in my mouth.

A quick swallow of champagne sent it down, thankfully before the full flavor hit my mouth. I have eaten a lot of things in a lot of places, but that was the most stomach-turning flavor I had ever had in my mouth. It was as if someone had made a candied rotten shrimp, coated it in chalk, and then turned up all the flavors to eleven.

'PAUL!' Lydia screamed, dropping her fork into the bowl.

'What?' I said. 'You told me not to forget!'

'I MEANT FOR YOU TO NOT FORGET THAT YOU HAD IT IN YOUR HAND! I didn't want whatever it is or...