If only B had asked the question, A thinks. Even in jest. Then A would be able to ask the question in return. But now she will never be able to ask the question. Unless she wants to be the first of them to break down and ask the question, she will have to somehow trap B into asking the question. And perhaps, A realizes, that is B’s tactic as well: perhaps he devised this description of the woman as bait for A, merely to provoke A into asking the question, so that B, in his follow-up email, could ask the question himself, without forfeiting his advantage or losing any face. Of course, two could always play at that game. A could deflect B’s stratagem, either by ignoring B’s Scrabble anecdote altogether, or else by responding to it with good-natured aplomb, with none of the expected jealousy. She could even commend his caricature of the woman: ‘How hilarious,’ she could write, ‘tell me more about your marriage fantasy.’ If deployed properly, A’s display of supreme indifference might rattle B into asking the question (‘Why doesn’t she care? Is she seeing someone?’). A would have reversed B’s own stratagem, turning it instantly against him, just as a Scrabble player can pluralize an opponent’s word, tacking an s onto it and siphoning its points.

However A chooses to respond, one thing is certain: she must not reveal her suspicions about the woman. The last thing in the world she can write is, ‘Are you seeing this woman?’, or even, ‘Do you find this woman attractive?’ Such questions are sure to make B feel claustrophobic. Besides which, A would only be giving B ideas. If B wasn’t attracted to this woman already, A’s prying would surely put the thought into his head, inspiring him to pay closer attention in the future (‘Am I attracted to her?’). Then it would only be a matter of time before they slept together. That is the problem with jealousy, A thinks: it always ends by engendering the thing it dreads. By obsessing over your lover’s colleague (‘Are you attracted to her?’; ‘Was she at this party?’; ‘Did you email her?’), you only brainwash your lover into obsessing over his colleague. Although you had intended to repel your lover from the colleague, you end up driving your lover straight into the arms of the colleague. ‘It’s funny,’ your lover might confide to the colleague one day, ‘but she thinks we’re having an affair.’ ‘That is funny,’ the colleague might say, and then it is all over. Now the idea has taken on a life of its own. It is entirely too late to stop it. That is the prophetic power of jealousy, A thinks: it is eventually self-fulfilling, given a long enough period of time; it has a sibylline effect on the libido. You keep on telling the lover that he is doomed to sleep with the colleague, and he keeps on denying it with blind vehemence, until the day when finally your barrage of insistences and suspicions and auguries penetrates through to his unconscious, catalyzing an anagnorisis in him: then he is able to look at the colleague anew, noticing for the first time how beautiful she is, and he recognizes her at last as the woman with whom he is fated to betray you.