But the computer was batting its eyelashes at me. I grabbed the

wooden desk edge and pulled myself back to the keyboard.

I couldn’t help myself. I logged on to AOL under his screen name.

I clicked through his sent messages. Nothing more about the lesbian. In his new mail there was something about a stock to buy. Just before I logged off, one more new e-mail clicked into his box, with an attachment. In the body of the e-mail, the sender had written: “Thought you would dig these. They’re right up your alley.”

That begged me to open it up. Maybe it was something that would tip me to the perfect gift to buy him, something that would elicit the reaction, “How did you have any idea I was such a Beatles fanatic? You’re the best.” He’d lean over and kiss me and I’d feel the magic warmth of being half of a two again. My knowing “the perfect thing” would definitely make him like me more.

I moved the mouse and clicked twice, waiting for my tip to open up. But what I saw was not what I had been expecting.

There were two photos. Both taken on the beach, both featuring naked women. But they were not women. They were girls. From the size of the pubescent breasts, I judged the girls to be thirteen or fourteen. They were wearing absolutely nothing, and lay across a striped beach towel with their legs spread wide open.

“Holy shit.” I’d discovered his penchant for child porn. Now he was guilty of not only being a lesbian lover; he was into these kinky photos. These photos were against the law—just how far did this fascination with young girls go? I thought of that guy on Dateline who did those specials, “To Catch a Predator.”

Online kiddie porn could be a stepping stone to creepier stuff. What if he instant messaged young girls in chat rooms? I swiftly moved my cursor to sign off and hoped my computer wouldn’t sound an alarm at a national child porn watch group and send police to my door to arrest me. When the screen went blank, I stared at it anyway, imagining the images that had just infected my computer. Thankfully, the pictures were in the body of an e-mail, not downloaded to my desktop. But still I knew they would always be on my hard drive somehow. What kind of guy would find that kind of filth sexy? Or even amusing? I might love watching real autopsies and examining blood spatter at crime scenes, but this was really sick.

He was a loser, pathetic really. He could go to jail for this stuff. Let him marry some other desperate woman who would think he was a great catch and then discover his stash of kiddie porn while pregnant with their second child. I was way beyond that.