=Sign Here=

“Don’t look at me like I’m the devil,” he said over croissants in the hotel restaurant the next morning. The croissants were so warm and buttery they nearly made you swoon. We’d gone back to my room after drinks in the bar the night before. By then, he’d shown me the photographs of my husband and his secretary coming out of this very same hotel, the x-rated chat logs and emails lifted from his computer, nothing was left to the imagination.

“My fee is steep,” he'd informed me after laying out the evidence like a poker hand, “but I think you’ll find it's worth every penny. You’ll be set up for life once I’m through with him.”

“How steep?”

He quoted an astronomical figure. He waited for the usual reaction, got none at all, and assumed I was in shock.

“But it’s negotiable.”

I woke up first. It was still dark in the room. I lifted his hairy arm, heavy as a coil of iron chain, off my chest, and slipped out of bed. In the the bathroom, I washed the awful taste of the night before out of my mouth. By the time I came back to the room, brushing my hair, the pale light was just beginning to creep across the carpet as the sun rose from behind a roof where water tanks stood like alien landing craft. I brushed and brushed and watched the tide of light advance. Eventually the light climbed the bed where the sheet had come up, kicked off in our restless sleep, revealing two surprisingly delicate hooves lying on the mattress.

Now, sitting across the table from me at breakfast, he seemed to be waiting to see if I’d mention them or if I would pretend not to have noticed. He watched my face carefully for the least little tell, but as more than one shrink has seen fit to inform me, I have a great poker face no matter how horrendous the trauma is that I’m describing. As a result, I’ve hardly a wrinkle. I’m often mistaken for being ten to fifteen years younger than I am. What can I say? I'm lucky in that sense, I guess.

A birth defect, I preferred to think. He probably should have warned me instead of letting it come as a surprise. But how would he have told me? I’m sure he wants to be treated just like any other man. I don’t believe in embarrassing the handicapped.

I said nothing.

He put his hand over mine and looked earnestly into my eyes, as if he were about to tell me the most romantic thing in the world. “Your husband is a real asshole."

“Ex-husband,” I said, without so much as a Mona Lisa smile, already half-smitten.

He gave me his fountain pen. You could feel the expense of it. The contract was on the table as if it had always been on the table.

"Sign here," he said.