“I can’t,” the man had muttered.
“You already did,” Rosa pointed out. She’d gotten to her feet, pretending she was Catwoman, some slinky, sexy, half-animal femme fatale. When she’d stretched her arms up over her head and felt the man’s gaze on her, she knew that she had him.
“You got a bed in this place?” she asked. He’d nodded, and he’d taken her there.
It had all been so easy. A little dirty talk, a lot of moaning. Rosa even found herself occasionally enjoying the feeling of that clean, strong body working against hers （not everybody Rosa encountered was clean and strong）。 Deeper, she’d said. Harder. More. And that was pretty much all that it took.
After the third time, he’d fallen asleep, passing out so fast it was like he’d been bludgeoned. Rosa had slipped out of bed and crept barefoot through the apartment, pausing to extract his wallet from his pants. She learned that the man’s name was Eli Danhauser, and, from the textbooks, she guessed he was studying to be a dentist. Folded in one of the books she found a scrap of a letter, one she guessed he hadn’t sent. I know this isn’t what you wanted, but we can make it work. I’ll do anything I can to make you happy.
Rosa swallowed hard. She moved on to the kitchen, opening the refrigerator, helping herself to a few swigs of white wine and a banana. In the bathroom, she’d brushed her teeth with her index finger and reapplied her makeup. When she heard Eli stirring she’d hurried back to the bedroom, slipped under the sheets, and pretended to be asleep, so she could do that slow, languorous stretching-and-blinking-into-wakefulness thing that men seemed to like so much （and how, she wondered, did none of them ever notice when the woman who’d ostensibly been sleeping beside them all night woke up wearing lipstick and mascara? They’re all idiots, her sister, Amanda, said in her head）。 “Good morning, handsome,” she’d crooned.
“No,” he said, and sat up straight, looking terrified and sick. “No, you have to go.”
That was fine, Rosa figured. They’d done it three times, which was more than enough to convince him that he’d slipped one past the goalie. She’d taken a shower, using the wife’s bodywash and shampoo. When she’d come out of the steamy bathroom, Eli was standing there, looking pale and twitchy. He had money in his hand.
Part of Rosa felt the insult like a slap. Another part thought, Maybe it’s going to be this easy. Maybe I won’t have to lie to him at all.
“I’m not a prostitute,” she’d said.
“A gift, then,” he’d said, and she’d taken the money, thinking, sadly, Why not? It wasn’t until she was in the elevator that she’d realized that maybe she was a prostitute, after all.
Rosa had gone home. She’d called in sick at the restaurant, again. She’d ignored the two messages Benji had left for her. She took off her clothes, put on her bathrobe, and got into bed, where she tried not to think.
She told herself that the guy, Eli, had plenty of money. Six hundred dollars was nothing to a guy like that, a guy who was going to be a dentist and would probably end up living in a mansion in some fancy suburb, driving his kids to private school in some fancy car. But the words of the letter she’d found kept playing, twisting through her brain on an infinite loop: I’ll do anything I can to make you happy. He’d tried to stop. He’d tried to be faithful. He was a good guy, and she’d seduced him into misbehavior; playing Eve to his Adam, holding out the apple, telling him it was fine if he took a bite.
Rosa made herself go back to the bar that night. He was there again, the way she’d known he would be, so she’d done her slinky, sexy, Catwoman thing again and let him take her home. The second time with Eli was even worse, because the previous evening’s engagement seemed to have taken the edge off. Eli didn’t just want to fuck her; he seemed intent on pleasing her. Rosa had been forced to fake two separate orgasms, lying on a stranger’s bed with a stranger’s face between her legs, before she could get him inside of her again. Rosa had moaned and sighed and thrashed around, all the while thinking what a sin it was to destroy someone else’s marriage, to take a good man and tempt him into indulging his own darkest nature.
“What’s your name?” he’d asked when it was over.
Oh, shit, thought Rosa. “Jane,” she’d said. “Call me Jane.” Time to change the subject, she thought, so she’d given him her very best blow job, burning with shame as she licked and sighed and swallowed, feeling like the very worst person in the world. When, on the third morning, he’d finally called it off, she’d felt nothing but relief, chased immediately by regret at what she knew she had to do to him next.