So I said his real name, and Alberto, or Jonathan, sort of jumped back on the bed. I mean, here’s this previously uber-confident Latin lover looking at me completely frightened and timid and covering himself with a pillow. I could see scared little Jonathan through his eyes. “How do you know my name?” he asks. And I say, “Jon, it’s me, Elizabeth.” And he jumps off the bed and covers up his body with the crumpled sheets, very freaked out, saying it’s twisted of me to do something like this. And I’m just laughing. I couldn’t help myself. I mean, this is the opposite of ideal, right? Here’s Alberto looking all crease-browed, exactly like Jonathan used to look, and accusing me of av-stalking him. Well, that took a while to figure out. But, to Jonathan’s credit, he didn’t log off. He actually came back to the bed and sat down and told me I looked amazing. I don’t know if I should’ve taken that as a compliment or an insult. I’ve spent a lot on upgrades and I’m proud of Sable—she looks like how I feel inside, even though … well … I actually look like a fifty-six-year-old mother of two college kids: overworked, stressed out, financially struggling, like someone who would benefit from online yoga. “You look great too, Alberto,” I said. Because I liked seeing my ex in Alberto’s body. He’d been confident and dominant in a way I really liked. And though I wanted to tease him about it, I also thought: Okay, maybe this is who Jonathan always was inside. Like, perhaps all along the two of us have lived with these hidden avatars within us, and it was those other human profiles named Elizabeth and Jonathan who were the false personalities. Like maybe, if we could’ve been Alberto and Sable all along, we never would’ve gotten divorced.

We’ve started seeing one another again. We rendezvous about five or six times a week. Sometimes I’ll just log on and lie in bed with him, tell him about my day, and he’ll listen, which is something Jonathan never did. I’d say the past six months with Alberto have been the best months Jon and I ever spent together.

JENNIE & SUSAN

Yeah, we’re that couple. We met through your site at one of those free, twenty-four-hour mingle-trials. It was a one-in-a-million chance. She lives in Eugene and I’m in Jersey, and I logged on figuring the whole place would be filled with straight guys pretending to be lesbians. Like, okay, you and you are total phonies, and you’re using your wife’s account right now. Plus, apparently, it was a coast-to-coast mingle; I didn’t know how insane those are.

SUSAN [takes Jennie’s hand]: She’s not techy at all.