She was looking at me matter-of-factly. The emptiness was gone.

“What?” I said.

“He will arrive three minutes early, because he always does. Which means we have eighteen minutes.” She must have seen me looking in through the door, toward Franklin, because she said, “Franklin is asleep, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then . . .” She reached over, let her hand trail in my lap.

Still that directness about appetites that stops me short.

What is this? I wanted to say. What are you doing? But I let her guide me to my feet and into the bedroom.

“Wait here,” she said. She crossed to her side of the bed. She turned toward me, raised her arms above her head, let her dress slip to the floor. She looked at me as I looked at her, half-naked, matter-of-fact. And that smile, and the certainty of it, and despite myself I found myself smiling back at her.

“Now you,” she said.

I heard you return home, I wanted to say. The clock said four.

Instead I undressed and lay down on the bed while she stood in her Calvin Klein underwear, looking down at me.

Where were you, Elsa?

And still I could feel desire gnawing at me. Her smile, her eyes drinking me in. The jut of her lips. The tilt of her thigh. The sheer confidence she had in her body, unlike any other woman I’d known. Her pride in the gentle curve of her belly. She turned. I watched as she walked through the door past Franklin and into the bathroom. I heard the taps run.

From the terrace I heard voices. Neighbors. Elsa wouldn’t care that the door was open. I did. I got to my feet, padded naked out onto the terrace, fetched the drinks, and closed the door. I returned to our room, put a glass on each nightstand, lay with my head against the headboard.

When Elsa came in, she was naked too.

I heard you, I wanted to say, when you came home this morning at four. When I felt you roll in beside me I looked at the clock. But she had been up at seven with the baby as if nothing were wrong, and I knew that if I asked her she would laugh it away.

It’s what we do here, Cal.

And oh, her lips, her breasts, her tilted thigh.

“Venus,” I said.

She looked down at me, amused, cupped her left hand across her pubis and her right across her breasts.

“Swollen Venus,” she said.

“Venus Venus,” I said. “Now and forever.”

She sat down on the bed beside me. She looked at me, ran her hand along my jaw. “Why are you so sweet to me, Cal?”

“Take the compliment,” I said.

She shook her head. “But thank you. I appreciate the thought.” For a moment she looked vulnerable and small. I wondered if I had misread her.

Your confidence, Elsa . . .