She had tried to keep things that way with Mark too, but he simply wouldn’t let her. They’d had exciting, wonderful sex, and they were both relaxed and tired. She had thought of it as feeling like a warm, wet noodle. They were in his hotel room a few miles outside Weldonville, off the highway, because they had not dared meet in Denver, where they both lived and worked in those days. She decided it was best to go, but it was very late—too late to go to her parents’ house in Weldonville, and too late to get a room somewhere else without being memorable to anyone who saw her.

She’d tried to get up anyway, but he had held her and made her want to lie there some more. She thought about the fact that it was the first time he’d see her when she didn’t have makeup on, and had questionable breath, and wasn’t a graceful, tall creature painted in romantic dim light, but an awkward, bony person with big feet and with hair sticking out from her head like straw, and blond eyelashes that made her eyes look like two holes poked in an uncooked pie crust.

What if she snored? Or drooled in her sleep? He was married to Marcia, who was beautiful and small-boned and tiny, like a rare bird. But that night, Mark was falling asleep with, literally, a basketball player. She lay there in his arms fretting about the way she would seem to him until she fell asleep.

She remembered waking up in a panic. The light seemed horribly bright. But at least he wasn’t up and walking around. She carefully rolled to the side of the bed and raised her torso so her feet would be planted on the ground. She stepped to the chair where she had left her clothes and purse, and slipped into the bathroom. When she had locked the door, she began to feel safe.

She used the toilet, brushed her teeth, showered quickly, fixed her hair, and applied makeup without yielding to the temptation to put the eye makeup on as thickly as she had in the evening. She opened the door and came out, and realized he was not in the bed. She took a painful indrawn breath. He was gone. No, he wasn’t. His suitcase was still there, open on that folding stand.

She heard heavy footsteps outside the door, heard the lock click, and turned to see him coming into the room. He was wearing gym shorts and sneakers and a T-shirt with a dark triangle of sweat on the chest, and there was a thin coating of sweat on his forehead and arms. “Hey, how long have you been up?”

“Not long,” she said. Her relief had helped her make her voice sound relaxed and a little amused.