Does that come as a surprise to you? Saint Whoever would say. About your husband?

It does, yes, Alma would say. I lived in a state of self-imposed blindness, never seeking truth.

That’s too bad, Saint Whoever would say. That’s some bad juju right there. What is the greater sin, do you think: adultery or standing in the way of true love?

I don’t know, Alma would say.

Standing in the way of true love, Saint Whoever would say.

But he was my husband, Alma would say.

Well, marriage is just a shallow cultural tradition, Saint Whoever would say. At least, it is to us up here.

She fucked him and fucked him, Alma would say, all crestfallen. Right under my nose. And I never knew.

And yet here I am in Heaven, Debi would say. Think about it. Ha. That had all just popped out.

The creative mind, wow.

Especially hers.

Well, Paul had deserved better. Than Alma. He was so sweet. You got the feeling that, in being a fuckhound, he was just acting on his true nature. He took so much joy in it, flattered you so sincerely after, never ignored you in public, like so many did, but always lit up when he saw you and sometimes even gave you a wink, with Alma standing right there, which was weirdly delicious, because Alma (she had to admit it) had always had this sort of glamour, being one of the older girls and (oh, she could give her this much) really pretty. One time, at some sort of yard party, Paul had given Debi that wink and they’d snuck off to a pool shed or some such, and afterward, when he rejoined Alma, who was (as she so often was back then, ha ha) looking worried, Paul put his hand right on Alma’s ass while giving her, Debi, a second wink, and Alma had brightened so sweetly at his hand on her ass, as if it really meant something to her, that, thinking of that pathetic little brightening now, she, Debi, felt a twinge of sisterhood, as in “Men are pigs, sister, are they not?,” although, at the time, not so much, because she’d just been dumped by either Eric or Chase, and that second wink (which meant, as she took it, “Das Wifen has no clue how bondingly naughty it was for you to go down on me just now while sitting on that tub of chlorine”) had just made her really, really happy.

Could that guy ever talk! “I am maximally ardent pour toi,” he’d said. She’d written that one down. In her Krazee Jernel. Those were the days! You did whoever, then wrote about it in your Krazee Jernel.