The Secret Lives of Married Women Read Online Free PDF Page A

said.
    “Yeah, I get it,” Rae repeated. “I don’t blame you.”
    I stared into my glass, which was nearly empty.
    “You say this happened a few years ago,” I said finally. “So how did your friend resolve it?”
    “She moved,” Rae said.
    “Well, we just moved in,” I said. “That’s not an option for us.”
    “I know it isn’t.”
    “The thing is, I don’t know how to talk about this with Stas. If I tell Stas, it will be an open war.”
    “I hear you,” Rae said. “I think most men would be the same way. My own ex, the one I mentioned to you? Forget it. I could never tell him something like this, without endangering the other guy’s life. Literally.”
    “Well, not that Stas is violent,” I said. “But there’s a certain coldness in him that scares me sometimes.”
    This was the first time I’d admitted such a thing to another person.
    “Don’t get me wrong,” I added quickly. “He’s a wonderful husband—”
    “Oh, he is,” Rae broke in. “I can tell. I think Stas is great. I mean outwardly, he’s all business, wants to get it done, won’t bother with small talk. I admit it was hard to get a read on him at first. But over time, I got the sense that he’s a really good guy.”
    She paused to take some money from her purse as the bartender refilled our glasses. Then she lifted her beer and knocked it against mine.
    “Where did you meet him, anyway?”

5
    Kaiser Tech was a start-up company in midtown Manhattan that provided computer services to small businesses. I was there as a temporary receptionist. At the time, the company was just three men and me in a very small room. Bryce was the owner. He was in his early forties and looked like a cross between a koala and a cement truck. He had graying hair combed back in waves from his forehead, a barrel chest, and limbs like hams. Marcus and Stas were the two engineers, both striking in their way. Marcus was slight of build with eyes the color of a koi pond: a startling clear green flecked with gold. Stas was tall and lean with light brown hair, and his own hazel eyes were wide and dreamy.
    When I’d taken this job, it hadn’t seemed promising, but I was so demoralized already that it hardly mattered. I’d just botched my first major role in a Broadway play, that of Blanche DuBois in a revival of A Streetcar Named Desire. The critics were unanimous in trashing me (Leda Reeve is the weak link here...this Blanche would do better to rely on the kindness of casting agents for the afternoon soaps...painful to watch, for all the wrong reasons...shallowly rendered... lacking in conviction). This flurry of reviews appeared the morning after our opening night, and the show closed before the end of the first week.
    For many days afterward, I could not stop trembling. I trembled even while lying in bed at night. During the afternoons, curled up at one corner of my threadbare sofa, it seemed my every thought included the word failure , the word finished . I made cup after cup of tea just to have something warm to hold. I was afraid to talk to anyone I knew, even afraid to answer the phone. It felt like a matter of survival to shut down, as though maybe—if I could block out any reference to the play, shun each condolence call, never look at another newspaper—none of it would be real. If I kept my head down, put one foot in front of the other, aspired to nothing beyond my own next breath, maybe I could disappear, or turn into someone else. Answering the phone for a technology company seemed like a fine start.
    The temp agency gave me an address in midtown west. Getting there involved a bus and then a subway, as well as several icy blocks on foot. The office was in a dismal part of town just south of the Port Authority, where junkies and hustlers still made up much of the street population. The building was run down, the tile in the lobby crumbling. Bryce’s company was on the fourth floor, and even before I reached his threshold, I could see that