Room to wriggle. That was what everyone wanted these days; not to wriggle out of contracts, vows, and legal obligations, but room to wriggle within them. Have it all, in other words; eat your potato chips without accruing fat grams. Certainly that was what Desmond wanted, but at least he had the good sense to keep quiet about it.

“So this is the first time you’ve . . . done something like this?”

“Yes, of course. I’m not saying it’s been easy, but fidelity is a discipline, like everything else. You learn how to adapt. Like giving up cigarettes. When Velan started traveling for work, I found that if I went on a little bender while he was out of town, it relieved the pressure and I didn’t need to fool around.”

“A bender?”

“Oh, you know, call a few phone numbers, go to a couple of sex parties, line something up over the Internet. A couple days of debauchery to clear the pipes. I’m sure you’ve done the same thing”

“Russell doesn’t travel much.”

“When you travel then.” Peter got up and started to sort a pile of clean laundry on the floor beside the bed. Some of the shirts and underwear he rolled up and tossed back onto the floor in disgust, others he carefully folded and laid in the suitcase. “I’ll bet you’ve got a few things lined up in Boston already.”

Desmond had spent two weeks negotiating with the Deerforth College housing office, trying to line up an apartment, but clearly this wasn’t what Peter had in mind. He’d agreed to Russell’s request for monogamy only when he had a guarantee that they’d keep that part of their relationship quiet; male couples who advertise their monogamy are usually tossed into the eunuch category and end up getting invited to dinner parties where people discuss dogs. Perhaps he’d misled Peter somewhere along the line about his own faithfulness to Russell, but probably not intentionally. As for Boston, he assumed the promise of monogamy would begin to grow fuzzy, like a radio signal, outside a hundred-mile radius of the broadcasting tower, but he’d barely had time to put together his courses, never mind organize a sex life. Admitting any of this in light of Peter’s six months of extramarital bliss would sound too much like defeat. “Well, I’ve got some plans,” he said vaguely. “A few things, you know . . . lined up.”

“Exactly. It wouldn’t be normal if you didn’t.”

“Exactly.”