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I'm late for high tea at the Living Room. I always am nowadays, it seems, and not by choice. Traffic is fine, but the idea that people are waiting gives me a mild degree of angina.
“Do you mind if I smoke?” I ask the cab driver. Hovik, the card reads.
“No problem,” he responds in a thick accent. Well, thank God.
“Would you care for one?” I offer, extending the case toward him.
“I have, thank you,” he says.
I sit back and light my cigarette.
“What you do at hotel?” Hovik asks me.
“Beg your pardon?”
“At Peninsula,” he says. “What you do there?”
“Oh,” I respond, taking a drag, feeling a little invaded. “I'm taking tea with some friends.”
Hovik laughs loudly.
“You take tea, really?” he asks. He looks at me in the rear view mirror.
“Am I boring?” I ask laughing.
“You need secret life.”
“A what?”
“Secret life. Everyone need secret life. If not, they boring. But secret life fills with meaning.”
“What do you mean 'secret life'?”
“A life that's only you, nobody know, where you have fun, have drink, have men and nobody know.”
Suddenly, it doesn't matter so much that I'm late.
“How long have you been married, Hovik?” I ask him.
“Twenty-five year married.”
“And you've had a secret life how long?”
“All the time I have secret life.”
“And your wife?” I ask.
“Maybe she have secret life. No way know about secret life she have. If no secret life, no meaning. Stay home all day.”
After my friend Jane got married, she went a little crazy.
“My little sister asked me if she should save herself for marriage,” she told me hysterically one day over Pinkberry. “Save herself! I told her if she waited for marriage she would never have sex. Ever.”
I laughed. “I hear you, sister.”
“No, really. John comes home and vegetates in front of the TV. It's like, dude. I know you're tired. I'm tired, too, but it's sex! We used to defy physics for sex when we were dating. I remember this time he drove all the way out to see me when I was living in San Diego. He drove all the way over, we had sex and ate and then he drove back. He got home in time to shower and rush to a meeting. Did he complain? No! It was amazing! Let's do it again, baby! And now? Now, Anaiis? Now it's like he can hardly even think about sex because it's so much work. I'm living in a zombie marriage.”
“Yeah, it definitely sounds like it's eating your brain,” I joked.
“I'm thinking about having an affair.”
“Jane!”
“Nothing involved, just, you know...”
“Outsourcing?”
“Exactly!” she exclaimed, finally smiling. “Am I crazy?”
“No,” I replied. “You're not crazy. Just, you know, human. And as such, prone to error.”
“Oh, you think less of me now!” she whined.
“I don't think less of you. I think a lot of people think about it from time to time.”
“Have you?”
“About cheating?” I asked. “Aside from the fact that it flies in the face of what you have, I'm scared of the explosion. I mean, for me, it's never just sex. Think about it—you're a zombie, right, and you need that jolt of life. Sex at random isn't enough. You are dying for that fire of connection, that passion. So you get it, even if you have an agreement that you're just lovers and nothing else—how do you contain the energy between you? And do you want to contain it? Isn't part of the beauty the wild, bursting tidal wave of emotion?”
Jane didn't say anything.
“How do you box up desire and put it away? It's highly corrosive. How many people are that compartmentalized?”
“Wow,” she said finally. “I guess you've thought about it a lot more than I have.”
I walk into the lobby and pull out my phone to phone Lisa, when a familiar coat catches my eye.
“Bianca?” I ask, walking up behind her.
She turns around, a confused look on her face.
I pull off my sunglasses.
“It's me, silly!” I say.
“Anaiis!” she says, giving me a hug. “What are you doing around here?”
“Tea. Wanna join us?” I ask. “What are you doing here? Why haven't I seen you?”
“You know work,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Do you want to step out for a cigarette?”
“Are you smoking again?” I ask.
“It's horrible, I know,” she says, taking my arm and leading me toward the doors. “Don't tell Jeff.”
“I wouldn't dare, darling,” I say. “But I can't. I'm really late as is—are you sure you don't want to join us? You remember my friends Lisa and Simone?”
“No, thank you, I have a—a meeting thing,”
