It’s one of the things that always irritates me about my husband: his rigid, my-way-or-the-highway Southern sense of honor.
I jam my mobile between chin and shoulder to button the white coat over my smart crepe skirt. There’s nothing I can do about the fuck-me red shoes. “Fine. If you’ve made up your mind.”
“Think of it as a belated birthday present.”
I close my eyes, suddenly awash with remorse. “Oh, Jackson. I’m sorry.”
“Forget it.”
“I’ve been so busy at the hospital—we’re understaffed—”
“I said forget it.”
The silence lingers. How could I miss his birthday? It’s Valentine’s Day, for God’s sake. You’d think I could manage to remember that.
Jackson coughs again. “How’s the cold?” I ask quickly, guiltily.
“Actually, I feel kinda lousy, to be honest. I think I’m spiking a fever.”
I suppress a smile. It’s extraordinary, the way the same bug affects the male and female immune systems. I should write a paper on it: “A virus that will just produce sniffles in the female of the species miraculously becomes an upper respiratory infection the moment it encounters macho Y chromosomes….”
“Look, Jackson, we’ll go out on the weekend, I promise. I’ll make up some excuse—”
“Sure.”
“Yep. Whatever.”
“You’ll enjoy it more when you’re feeling better anyway.” Then, partly to appease my conscience, and partly because, despite William, despite everything, it is still true, I add, “I love you.”
“Love you more.”
It’s our catchphrase, one of those couply exchanges you develop in the early months together and then later cling to, like a lifebelt, out of mingled superstition and hope and fear when the going gets rough.
It is also, in six words, a synopsis of our marriage.
THE ADULTERY CLUB
A Bantam Discovery Book
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bantam trade paperback edition published February 2008
Bantam mass market edition published February 2008
Published by
Bantam Dell
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and
incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or
are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living
or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2008 by Tess Stimson
Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are registered
trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stimson, Tess.
The adultery club / Tess Stimson.
eISBN: 978-0-307-43259-9
1. Triangles (Interpersonal relations)—Fiction.
2. Adultery—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3619.T564A66 2008
813′.6—dc22 2007026305
www.bantamdell.com
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