On the other hand, Tony said he had been planning to go to the meetings. If the trip had already been in the works, it wouldn’t be much out of his way to stop over and find out what I was up to.

I wanted to believe it, because the alternative was an ugly one. If Tony was the faceless hypothetical conspirator John and I had invented, it would mean he was a cold-blooded, dishonest bastard who was ready to betray every ethical and professional principle—and that he had been making out with Friedl at the same time he was supposed to be enjoying my company. Guess which bothered me more.

I refused to believe it. There was a third possibility, and that was that Tony was completely unwitting. A man is innocent until proven guilty, after all. But if he was unwitting, I preferred to keep him that way. Tony and I had collaborated once before, with some success, but I didn’t want to make a habit of it. Even if John had not turned up…

John. I should have locked him in the closet, tied him to the bed…. Not that he couldn’t get out of any prison I could construct. He had gotten out of worse ones. What if he disappeared and never came back?

And then there was Schmidt. The thought of my boss, and of the possible permutations—all disastrous—of Schmidt and Tony, John and Schmidt, Tony and John, and all three—sent my brain into overload. The terminal was in sight. I decided to emulate Scarlett O’Hara and think about it tomorrow.

I had hoped the plane would be late, or that it would take Tony a while to get through customs. Both those contingencies would have occurred if I had been breathlessly anticipating the moment when I could fold him in a passionate embrace. Since I wasn’t, they didn’t. He was already there.

Though the terminal was crowded with holiday travelers, I had no trouble spotting him because he was a head taller than anyone else. He was bareheaded. His hair, thick and black and wavy, is the kind women love to run their fingers through, which is probably why Tony, thoughtful soul that he is, seldom wears a hat. He looks like a popular misconception of a poet (who usually looks like the popular misconception of a truck driver). He has delicate hollows under his cheekbones, and a thin, sensitive mouth, and a high forehead over which his hair tumbles in distracting curls.

I attributed his frown and his formal outstretched hand to annoyance at my tardiness, so I brushed the latter aside and flung myself into his less-than-enthusiastic arms. They were not unenthusiastic for long; as they tightened around me, and his lips warmed to the task at hand, I thought how nice it was to have to stand on tiptoe to kiss a man. After the first second or two I didn’t make any other mental comparisons; it would be like comparing apples and oranges, each is delicious in its own way, it all depends on which you prefer. There is no doubt, however, that a certain degree of guilt increased the ardor of my embrace—though why the hell I should have felt guilty I don’t know.