I stopped and turned toward her. “Is what so bad?”

“To have an affair?”

Her question seared—it felt both suggestive and forgiving. At the time, a photo of Eliot Spitzer and his scorned wife, Silda, adorned the front page of the New York Post. I felt myself blush. “I don’t know,” I said. “But it is in this country.”

She laughed. Her laugh was deep and started in the back of her throat, getting increasingly lighter as it worked its way forward. “True.”

My body surged with heat. When I got home after my set that night, I googled her. I discovered that she wrote fiction. A short story with her byline came up, a simple piece about a woman struggling to keep her marriage intact as the other couples in their circle divorced. I wondered if it was based on truth, and I searched for details that matched her reality as I knew it. During class the following week, I made a point to mention it.

“I read your story,” I said, nervous to admit it and tingling with excitement, as though I’d accessed some part of her that was now laid bare between us.

“Oh,” she said. She nodded once, then offered the smile. “Thank you.”

She appeared not to care whether I liked it, confident that it was good without my approval. Still, I felt encouraged to say, “It would be nice to meet up sometime. Maybe after the class is over.”

She nodded in return. “It would.”

We met in early September, at the Nespresso store in Midtown East, three blocks from our classroom. I showed up in a pencil skirt and a silk sleeveless shirt. We sat down and ordered cappuccinos, and I resisted asking for skim milk so I wouldn’t seem too weight-conscious or too American. The conversation flowed. She talked about walking her daughter to school, her husband’s startup, their vacation home in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, on the Cote d’Azur. I tried to match her level of privilege and exposure. “I’ve been to Nice once,” I said. “For a week.” I didn’t mention that I’d gone with Kate, toward the end of our relationship. Nor did I mention Anna, worried that, as a straight French woman, the entire concept of queerness would make her uncomfortable. I felt slightly tipsy as we left, though we hadn’t had anything to drink. When the bill came I hesitantly asked if she would send me some of her unpublished writing to read.

She placed her credit card on the table as I reached for my wallet, waving my hand away. “You want to read more from me?” she asked, sounding almost suspicious.

I panicked—until then I’d felt emboldened, but her response made me embarrassed. “I thought I’d ask,” I said. “If that’s okay.”