Wife Living Dangerously Read Online Free PDF

unconscious for hours until she eventually choked on her own vomit and died. Harry didn’t discover her body until 11:00 P.M. that night, when he went into the bathroom to floss his teeth. This was the cautionary tale Michael and I referred to again
     and again as we renewed our commitment to a long, happy, and communicative marriage. “Do me a favor,” he’d joke. “If I’m not
     back from the bathroom in a half hour, come check on me, okay?”
    As I fold laundry this morning, I come across my pink Victoria’s Secret camisole with matching tap shorts and realize that
     Michael and I haven’t had sex in seventeen days. Our sex wasn’t as spontaneous as it had been before parenthood, but it was
     as sturdy and dependable as an Oldsmobile: once a week, usually on a Friday, between the kids’ bedtime and David Letterman.
    Michael likes to tell people I seduced him with my whistle and he’s probably right. I learned how to whistle in seventh grade
     from Cathy Sinclair, who shared a desk with me in homeroom. Cathy was from New York and she said that everybody in New York
     knew how to whistle because how else would you call a cab? She showed me how to make a little circle of my thumb and forefinger,
     press back on the tip of my tongue, shape my lips around my fingers, and direct the breath in just the right way to produce
     a loud, strong, enduring trill. I used to be shy about whistling like this, full throttle with two fingers in my mouth. I
     thought it was vulgar and unladylike, something my mother would do. I also thought it was unnecessary since taxis don’t cruise
     the streets here looking for passengers; anyone who needs “car service” would summon it with a phone call.
    Over the years I’ve come to appreciate my whistling skill. People admire it, especially men, who turn their heads to find
     the source of this eardrum-puncturing sound and smile when they see it’s coming from a girl. Whistling is also very handy
     when you want to express intense enthusiasm but don’t have the energy to applaud, during the rousing curtain call of
Les Misérables,
for instance. The way I figure it, one or two good whistles are worth three minutes of steady applause and it won’t leave
     you with sore palms.
    I went to my first football game in graduate school, Michigan against Penn State. I’d gone with a fellow teaching assistant,
     Henry Cochran, who had only recently begun to wear his hair in braids because he learned that his father’s great-great-grandmother
     might have been part Ojibwa. Henry had never been to a football game either and sat through the game grading papers. But I
     was quickly sucked into the crowd’s excitement and when our team made a critical touchdown I jumped to my feet, pulled off
     my glove, stuck my fingers in my mouth, and let loose with a skull-shattering whistle.
    A guy wearing a navy blue Michigan knit cap turned around and stared at me. “Did
you
do that?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Can you teach me?”
    Michael Flanagan was a third-year law student. I recognized him from student legal services where I’d gone for help with a
     problematic landlord—Sheba Horton refused to return my security deposit. Even though I’d left the apartment in pristine condition,
     she’d insisted that I’d violated the terms of the lease because I repainted the dingy walls. I was assigned to a hairy girl
     named Rebecca Turk and I distinctly remember wishing that I’d gotten the tall guy in the flannel shirt instead. With his face
     full of freckles and thick crimson hair he looked like someone who could slip into a McElvy family portrait and pass for one
     of my cousins. Considering that I had no cousins, and considering that I did not in fact have a family portrait, this boy’s
     familiarity was profoundly appealing to me. I assumed I’d never see him again. But here I was, on this bone-cracking day,
     teaching him to whistle.
    “Make a circle with your fingers. Like this.” I touched the tip