<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" Can you believe this?&amp;quot; the man in front of Piper grumbled. The line, which they&amp;#039;d finally crested, had snaked through a half-dozen switchbacks and extended down the glass-lined corridor of the Philadelphia International Airport, past the white-painted rocking chairs and the flat-screen board listing DEPARTURES and ARRIVALS. Piper gave him a tight smile. &amp;quot;I get here two hours early for a domestic flight \u2014 domestic!&amp;quot; said the man, undeterred by Piper&amp;#039;s silence. &amp;quot;And still. Look at this.&amp;quot; He jerked his chin at the line, barely bothering to glance at her face and almost certainly not seeing her, not really, because if he did, he&amp;#039;d see a woman on the verge \u2014 if not of a nervous breakdown, then definitely of tears. Piper had tried hard with her makeup kit in the 15-minute cab ride from her row house in Center City to the airport, but concealer could only do so much to cover up the dark circles under her eyes. Liner and mascara couldn&amp;#039;t disguise the threads of red in the whites of her eyes, lipstick could brighten her mouth but couldn&amp;#039;t change the way it turned down in a trembling bow. When you come home from work and your husband meets you at the door, with his bags neatly packed at his side and says, &amp;quot;I won&amp;#039;t be here when you come back,&amp;quot; what do you do with that information? What do you do when you&amp;#039;ve got a 4-year-old, when you&amp;#039;re the only one in the house with a full-time job, when you&amp;#039;ve spent the last two years trying to jolly him out of the black cloud that&amp;#039;s enveloped him since he lost his teaching position, when you&amp;#039;ve been paying all the bills, trying to keep everyone happy and clothed and fed? What do you do when he tells you that the night before you&amp;#039;re leaving on a business trip to Paris? It turns out that what you do is hiss the words &amp;quot;Not now&amp;quot; and attempt to step over his suitcase, and you almost succeed, until you feel his firm grip on your elbow. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve been trying to tell you,&amp;quot; Tosh said, having the good manners to look pained. Piper supposed that this was true. &amp;quot;We need to talk,&amp;quot; he&amp;#039;d said, one rainy night back in September...so she&amp;#039;d filled the kitchen with cheery chatter, directed mostly at their daughter. &amp;quot;Piper, I&amp;#039;m not happy,&amp;quot; he&amp;#039;d said on New Year&amp;#039;s Eve...so she&amp;#039;d fetched him a dish of ice cream, handed him the remote, and slipped out of the den to return email from her office. When he&amp;#039;d started sleeping in the basement the month before, she&amp;#039;d told her daughter it was because she snored, and when he&amp;#039;d said he was in love with someone else, well, she&amp;#039;d simply ignored him. In love with someone else? It was ridiculous. They were married. End of story. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s a phase,&amp;quot; she&amp;#039;d said brightly to her best friend, Sarah, who&amp;#039;d looked at her with eyes brimming with unbearable sympathy. After that, Piper had stopped talking about it. Talking about it only made it real, and it couldn&amp;#039;t be. It was a phase, a bad mood, Mercury in retrograde or something like that. Tosh would get a job, he&amp;#039;d move his stuff out of the basement, he&amp;#039;d start wanting to sleep with her again, and everything would be fine. Except, if that were true, Tosh couldn&amp;#039;t have left. He couldn&amp;#039;t have piled his suitcase into the trunk of a taxi, crying, and ridden away from her. Yet that was exactly what he had done. All Piper could do was watch him go. This isn&amp;#039;t happening, Piper had told herself. She&amp;#039;d said it over and over in her mind, at increasing volumes, until she believed it. Not happening. Couldn&amp;#039;t happen. Then she&amp;#039;d gone inside, collected Nola from the babysitter, made her dinner and put her to bed. &amp;quot;Where did Daddy go?&amp;quot; her little girl had asked from the cozy depths of her bed (Nola slept with two down comforters, a cotton blanket, and flannel sheets, all of which would be kicked to the floor at some point during the night), and Piper had said, &amp;quot;Business trip.&amp;quot; She&amp;#039;d stayed up all night, zipping her toiletries into plastic bags, settling her suits in their dry-cleaner&amp;#039;s plastic into her suitcase, not checking her email, not listening for the phone. She&amp;#039;d shaved her legs and painted her toenails. She&amp;#039;d exfoliated. She&amp;#039;d reorganized her closet, bagging up pilled sweaters and two pairs of maternity pants for Goodwill. In the morning, she&amp;#039;d gotten Nola out of bed, supervised face-washing and teeth-brushing and Cheerios with cut-up banana, then walked her to nursery school. Piper&amp;#039;s mother, who&amp;#039;d be staying at the house and helping Tosh look after Nola while Piper traveled, would pick Nola up at noon and take her out to lunch and maybe a movie. At 2 o&amp;#039;clock Piper would call for a cab of her own and head to the airport and then Paris. By the time she got home from the trip, she kept telling herself, everything would be fine. Tosh would have realized how much he missed Nola, and missed her. Her mother would, of course, agree to stay an extra night to give them a chance to go out to dinner and maybe even spend the night in a nice hotel, and there, on anonymous, high-thread-count sheets, she and her husband would make everything all right again. In the airport, the line inched forward, and the man in front of her was still intent on conversation. &amp;quot;You from here? Philly?&amp;quot; he asked. Piper nodded. &amp;quot;You like it?&amp;quot; he persisted, and she nodded again. She supposed she should be flattered that a man, any man, thought she was worth an effort. Dressed for work, with eyeliner and high heels, her hair twisted on top of her head, she could still get away with a sexy-librarian look. In the mirror, plucking her eyebrows, she could see the signs of age \u2014 the deepening fan wrinkles in the corners of her eyes, the odd age spot and, still, the occasional zit. She was 40, with a 4-year-old, a full-time job, and an unhappy and unemployed husband (whose defection she would not, could not acknowledge), and sometimes she felt every day of her age and more. Tosh, of course, didn&amp;#039;t seem to have aged a minute. His nut-brown skin was smooth, his hair still glossy, his body firm, the muscles supple, visible whenever he moved. Tosh was a sculptor; he worked with his hands, with his body, heaving blocks of stone, while Piper, desk-bound and increasingly, dismayingly flabby underneath her clothes, supported them. &amp;quot;Where you heading?&amp;quot; the man asked. My life is over, Piper thought dimly. But, of course, she couldn&amp;#039;t say that. That was the kind of talk that got you shipped to what her family inevitably called the Bin \u2014 as in, Bubbe&amp;#039;s in the Bin again. Dad&amp;#039;s spending spring break in the Bin. Mental illness ran through her family like the veins of mold in blue cheese. Maybe that was why Tosh had gotten cold feet. Maybe that was why he&amp;#039;d said... The man was staring at her expectantly. &amp;quot;Paris,&amp;quot; she said, surprised at how normal she sounded. &amp;quot;Ah.&amp;quot; The man&amp;#039;s face softened, and his eyes took on a nostalgic shimmer. Piper could imagine the airport, with its sterile beige walls and thrum of noise, staticky PA announcements, the sound of a thousand wheels moving across miles of tiled floor, dissolving, as he imagined... what? The Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, some romantic bistro, a stroll through the Jardins de Luxembourg or along the Seine, arm in arm with his beloved? &amp;quot;Paris in the springtime.&amp;quot; Piper felt the need to clarify. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m working.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Oh, yeah?&amp;quot; he asked. &amp;quot;What do you do?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Consulting.&amp;quot; Nobody knew what that meant. Tosh had told her that repeatedly, after she&amp;#039;d gotten the offer. &amp;quot;Pipe, nobody knows what that means.&amp;quot; Once she&amp;#039;d taken the job (and really, with the money they&amp;#039;d offered, there was no way she could have not taken it), they&amp;#039;d gone away for a long weekend in the Bahamas, funded by her signing bonus. She&amp;#039;d spent one afternoon on the beach trying to explain the work that would fill her days, but Tosh just kept saying, &amp;quot;So you&amp;#039;re going to fire people,&amp;quot; until Piper was forced to concede that it was so. In reality, during the 10 years she&amp;#039;d worked for Brodeur Williams, she&amp;#039;d never actually fired anyone herself. She went in; she observed. She sat in on meetings, listening and taking notes, fading into the background, and then she delivered a report to the managers who&amp;#039;d hired her as to how the company could best streamline its operations. She never stayed for the actual firing. That wasn&amp;#039;t in her contract. &amp;quot;Poor you.&amp;quot; Finally, the man seemed to see her face, its pallor, her sorrow. He opened his mouth to say something else, but the line jerked forward again and split into six separate lines in front of six separate metal detectors, and her inquisitor was gone. Piper handed over her ticket and passport for a woman in a uniform to inspect. &amp;quot;This way, please. This way,&amp;quot; droned the security guards. Piper ended up behind a young mom pushing a baby in a stroller. A diaper bag hung from the handlebars, and the woman was fumbling with her purse and a bottle half-filled with what Piper recognized as breast milk. &amp;quot;Can I give you a hand?&amp;quot; Piper asked. &amp;quot;Oh, no, I&amp;#039;m good,&amp;quot; said the woman, who seemed cut from a more competent cloth than Piper. She lifted the baby into her arms and plopped the car seat on the belt, along with the diaper bag and her purse. She tried to fold the stroller one-handed, with the baby balanced on her hip, before giving up and looking at Piper. &amp;quot;Actually, if you wouldn&amp;#039;t mind...&amp;quot; Piper figured she needed help folding the stroller, and was surprised when the woman handed her the baby. &amp;quot;Hi, honey,&amp;quot; Piper said, jiggling the warm weight of the baby in her arms, marveling at how fast it came back \u2014 the curve of a bottom in the crook of her arm, the jiggle. With Nola she&amp;#039;d felt all thumbs and left feet, flipping through the stack of baby books at her bedside, trying to decipher every cry and coo and whimper. If she could do it again...but she caught that thought in the steel jaws at her brain&amp;#039;s perimeter. She nipped it with her mental gardening shears, sending the bud tumbling toward the dirt. No more babies. Not for her. &amp;quot;Next!&amp;quot; called the guard on the other side of the metal detector. Piper handed over the baby, pulled her computer out of her bag, slipped off her shoes, and walked through the doorway. Something beeped. Of course it did. All night, all day, she&amp;#039;d clung to the idea that travel could help her \u2014 a reboot, a fresh start, a little time away from home, and Tosh would miss her enough to change his mind \u2014 but the certainty settling into her bones told her otherwise. Her husband was not given to changing his mind. A man of his word was her Tosh. When he was just 23, he&amp;#039;d made up his mind to marry her, and he had. Now that he&amp;#039;d made up his mind to leave her, she could only expect that he&amp;#039;d do that, too. &amp;quot;Cell phone, jew&amp;#039;ry, iPod, BlackBerry, belt buckle,&amp;quot; the guard droned. Piper wasn&amp;#039;t wearing a belt, or any jewelry besides a single gold bracelet, her wedding band, and her engagement ring. Her phone and iPod were in her bag, along with a letter from Tosh that he&amp;#039;d held out to her while the cab idled at the curb. &amp;quot;Read it when you&amp;#039;re on the plane,&amp;quot; he&amp;#039;d said. She hadn&amp;#039;t taken it, had turned away, refusing to open her hand, but he must have tucked it in her bag when she wasn&amp;#039;t looking. &amp;quot;Try again,&amp;quot; said the guard, and Piper, head bent, stepped gingerly through the doorway. More beeping. Back in line, a very important businessman gave a very important sigh. Instinctively, Piper pulled off her bracelet and her rings, set them in a plastic dish and pushed the dish through the belt. She walked through the doorway once again \u2014 no beep this time \u2014 and shoved her jewelry into her pocket as she made her way to the business lounge by the gate. At the Admiral&amp;#039;s Club, Piper handed her card to the uniformed woman behind the desk. &amp;quot;Very good, Ms. DeWitt,&amp;quot; the woman said. She pressed a button. The etched-glass doors slid open. Piper collapsed on a gray love seat, her bag beside her, her wedding rings in her pocket, a letter from her husband that she didn&amp;#039;t want to read in her purse. From the cash bar, she purchased a glass of white wine. She never drank when she flew \u2014 it only worsened the jet lag \u2014 but if ever a day called for wine at 4 o&amp;#039;clock in the afternoon, today was the day. Thus fortified, she pulled her phone out of her purse and dialed her mother&amp;#039;s number. Deborah picked up on the first ring. &amp;quot;Piper?&amp;quot; she asked. &amp;quot;Where&amp;#039;s Tosh?&amp;quot; Piper&amp;#039;s heart crumpled. &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s not home yet?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Is he teaching?&amp;quot; Deborah asked. (Piper had never gotten around to telling her that Tosh was no longer an employee of the Philadelphia College of Art.) She could hear her mother pausing, then plunging ahead. &amp;quot;Nola&amp;#039;s asking for him.&amp;quot; Piper thought it wasn&amp;#039;t possible to feel any worse. At the sound of her daughter&amp;#039;s name, she discovered that she was wrong. It was as if she was a piece of Wonder bread, and the world \u2014 no, not the world, just Tosh \u2014 had become a giant rolling pin that had gone back and forth over her until she was nothing, invisible, gone. She lifted her wine glass, empty now, and held it to her eye as her mother&amp;#039;s voice, full of concern, said, &amp;quot;Piper, what&amp;#039;s wrong?&amp;quot; He left me, Piper thought. He left us. The words rose in her throat, swelling like balloons, choking off her air supply until she couldn&amp;#039;t speak, couldn&amp;#039;t breathe. &amp;quot;Piper?&amp;quot; said her mother. She pressed her lips shut. If she spoke, if she let those words go free, then it would be true...but here, in the half-world of the airport, the Land of Between, a place where everyone was on his or her way someplace else, maybe she could keep it a secret. Eight hours on the airplane, two weeks in Paris, and then... &amp;quot;Piper?&amp;quot; Her mother&amp;#039;s voice, no longer concerned, had taken on a familiar nagging edge. Words burst out of her mouth like clear water flooding past a dam. &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s got a seminar!&amp;quot; Deborah drew in a breath \u2014 a suspicious-sounding breath \u2014 but before she could say another word or ask another question, Piper said, &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s in New York. At the New School. He&amp;#039;s probably going to stay with Jeff and Rebecca, you know, in Brooklyn, instead of going back and forth every day with his pieces...you&amp;#039;ve got his cell, right?&amp;quot; she babbled. &amp;quot;You can always call him. I&amp;#039;m sure he&amp;#039;ll be back by Friday night, maybe Saturday morning...&amp;quot; She could picture her mother, her short cap of straw-colored hair, loose no-color cotton tops and elastic-waist pants, barefoot even though Piper had warned her that sometimes there were tiny shards and scraps of metal on the floor. Deborah had been resolutely single for 30 years, ever since she discovered Piper&amp;#039;s father had been seeing his secretary. She&amp;#039;d piled his belongings into suitcases, set the suitcases at the curb, and informed him that he was welcome to rejoin the family once he&amp;#039;d given up his extracurricular activities. Instead of giving up the secretary, her father had married her, and the two of them had settled in Oregon, and had twins...and how might things have worked out if, instead of giving him the boot, Deborah had tried to convince him to stay? Piper had never asked, but she knew for certain that her mother would have had little patience for Piper&amp;#039;s situation. &amp;quot;Call Carleen,&amp;quot; Piper said. &amp;quot;I meant to do it before I left. See if she can come help out.&amp;quot; Her mother&amp;#039;s tone grew marginally warmer. &amp;quot;Where&amp;#039;s her number?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;On the fridge.&amp;quot; Piper waited, the telephone clamped in one icy hand, until Deborah reported that she&amp;#039;d found the number and would call Carleen, and then call Piper back. Piper hung up, turned her phone off, and tucked it into her bag beside the letter. &amp;quot;I won&amp;#039;t be here when you come back.&amp;quot; The words clanged in her head. She closed her eyes. Piper Garroway met the man who would become her husband just the way the self-help books said she would. She met him when she wasn&amp;#039;t looking for a man or, really, for anything at all. She was 22 years old. She&amp;#039;d just graduated from college. On a whim, she&amp;#039;d taken over her friend Sarah&amp;#039;s summer share in a house at the Jersey Shore after Sarah unexpectedly got into the Teach for America program and had to pack up and ship out to Louisiana posthaste. Sarah had paid twelve hundred dollars for the privilege of being one of eight people in a three-bedroom house, but she&amp;#039;d given Piper a break, accepting eight hundred bucks, plus the tent Piper had bought for Outdoor Orientation freshman year and hadn&amp;#039;t used since. The house was a disappointment, even at its bargain-basement price: A tumbledown ranch with vinyl siding, it had thin walls, sandy shag wall-to-wall carpeting, a shower that produced a grudging trickle of rust-colored water that rarely made it past lukewarm, and a single toilet that flooded at least once per visit. Worse, Piper arrived to find out that her eight hundred bucks didn&amp;#039;t even get her into one of the bedrooms. Eight hundred bucks, she learned, got her a spot on the pullout couch in the living room, next to a stranger, a strange man with the strange name of Tosh. &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t worry,&amp;quot; said one of her housemates, a girl named Lisa whom she vaguely remembered from her residence hall. &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s hardly ever here.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Where does he go?&amp;quot; Piper asked. Lisa lifted her eyebrows and gave a knowing smirk. &amp;quot;He makes friends easily.&amp;quot; Piper met him on the beach that night. There was a bonfire, the obligatory keg of beer, and even though normally after a day in the sun and the water nothing would have made her happier than to shower, have a dinner of tomatoes and sweet corn, and curl up with her book, she&amp;#039;d decided that the only way to get through her weekends would be to spend as much time as possible out of the house. She&amp;#039;d waited in line for the shower, rinsed her hair and washed the salt and sand off her body as fast as she could, then pulled on a loose cotton skirt and a tank top, twisted her wet hair into a bun, and carried her flip-flops, her copy of Pride and Prejudice, and a can of Off! down to the beach. She was sitting on the dune, her legs tucked underneath her, marveling at the girls prancing around in string bikinis and wondering if there was enough light from the bonfire to read by, when the most gorgeous man she&amp;#039;d ever seen plopped down beside her. &amp;quot;I hear we&amp;#039;re sleeping together,&amp;quot; he said. Piper stared at him, feeling every bit of moisture disappear from her mouth, along with every word she&amp;#039;d ever known. His skin was as smooth and brown as polished sandalwood; his hair, black and glossy, was gathered into a short ponytail at the nape of his neck. Almond-shaped eyes glittered, curving enticingly upward as he looked at her. His hands, wrapped around his knees, were strong, the fingers long, the nails short and curved, neatly clipped. As Piper tried not to stare, he reached out one warm, square-shaped hand. After a moment, remembering what was expected, she took it, sliding her palm against his warm one, feeling, for the first time, those strong fingers against her skin. &amp;quot;Hello, roomie,&amp;quot; said Tosh DeWitt, whose father was African-American and whose mother was Japanese, who&amp;#039;d majored in fine arts at NYU and who would, two weeks later, take Piper&amp;#039;s virginity on an old comforter that they spread on top of the warm sand, underneath the stars. She surrendered it joyfully, in love for the first time in her life, intoxicated by everything about her boyfriend \u2014 his chest, bulging firmly into her hands when she slid them underneath his shirt, the way his hair was so glossy that it always looked wet, his brilliantly white teeth against his full lips. Tosh wasn&amp;#039;t just handsome, he wasn&amp;#039;t even merely gorgeous, or any of the words that typically applied to men. Tosh was beautiful, beautiful in body and face and spirit too, the most beautiful man she&amp;#039;d ever seen or imagined, and somehow, through some miracle, he loved her too, loved skinny, freckled, slightly-bucktoothed-in-spite-of-the-braces Piper Garroway, who knew, even at 22, that there was nothing exotic or alluring about her with the possible exception of her first name. &amp;quot;Ma&amp;#039;am?&amp;quot; A woman in a blue suit was patting her shoulder. Piper sat up, cotton-mouthed, foggy-eyed, blinking. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m so sorry,&amp;quot; the woman said, &amp;quot;but your flight has been canceled.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;What?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;There was a volcanic eruption in Iceland.&amp;quot; Piper stared. Was this a joke? Were there even volcanoes in Iceland? &amp;quot;The ash from the volcano has been spreading across Europe. No planes are landing in Paris right now.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Tomorrow?&amp;quot; asked Piper. Her heart was sinking. She&amp;#039;d have to go home, to her empty bed; she&amp;#039;d have to face Tosh&amp;#039;s absence, to tell her mother, and Nola, the truth. The woman shrugged. &amp;quot;We just don&amp;#039;t know yet. We&amp;#039;ll keep you posted, of course.&amp;quot; She handed her a piece of paper with a toll-free number and an email address. Piper stood, lifting her bag, wondering about her luggage, already checked through to Paris. In the chair beside her, a man in a gray suit was getting to his feet. &amp;quot;You too?&amp;quot; he asked. She nodded, picking up her purse and computer bag, already thinking about whether there was coffee at home and how she&amp;#039;d get her suitcase back when the man said, &amp;quot;The Four Seasons has rooms.&amp;quot; She looked at him. &amp;quot;If you need a place to stay tonight,&amp;quot; he added. He was a good-looking guy, with a thick mop of brown hair laced with silver, tall and rangy, wearing his suit and lace-up wing tips like a costume, like a boy dressed up for Halloween in Dad&amp;#039;s going-to-the-office clothes. He pointed at Piper&amp;#039;s wallet. &amp;quot;You got an American Express card?&amp;quot; She nodded. This man, she knew, would never tease her for firing people for a living. This man would understand the demands of her job, the way she had to dive into different corporations with different cultures all over the world. Unlike her husband, this man would be impressed. &amp;quot;Call the concierge,&amp;quot; the guy advised. &amp;quot;Tell them you&amp;#039;re stuck in Philadelphia...&amp;quot; She saw his mouth pucker as he spoke her city&amp;#039;s name, which made her smile \u2014 people had such prejudice about Philadelphia. &amp;quot;And you need a room for the night.&amp;quot; She fumbled for her phone, her fingers brushing, once more, at Tosh&amp;#039;s envelope, when the man spoke again. &amp;quot;Hey, how &amp;#039;bout we share a cab? You can call them from there. I want to get going.&amp;quot; He bounced lightly on the balls of his feet, clearly eager to be on the move. Piper wondered whether he was an athlete, a runner or maybe a rugby player. She imagined him in cleats and white cotton shorts that left his strong legs bare, racing up and down a field, calling to his teammates. Tosh swam, a solitary, silent activity that suited him perfectly. He&amp;#039;d cut through the water like one of his own moving installations, graceful and absolutely alone. But this guy.... He held out his hand with an appealing smile. No ring. &amp;quot;Mark Bancroft.&amp;quot; Actually, I live here, she said in her head. And I have to get home. But then she realized that she did not, in fact, have to go home. Her mother would be fine. Nola would be fine. In fact, it might be more disruptive if Piper appeared, only to leave again. And Tosh.... Without letting the thought continue, she took Mark&amp;#039;s hand. &amp;quot;Piper Garroway,&amp;quot; she said, even though she hadn&amp;#039;t been Piper Garroway for 16 years...and then, laptop bag swinging briskly, she followed the man through the lounge&amp;#039;s sliding doors, down the escalator, and out into the cool spring night. &amp;quot;Volcano,&amp;quot; he said, shaking his head. &amp;quot;Volcano,&amp;quot; she repeated, and surprised herself by laughing.  She thought that she knew how Mark Bancroft might imagine their evening would proceed. She&amp;#039;d seen enough films and TV shows about business travelers and the trouble they got into on the road...and, although she would have never admitted it, watched the occasional pornographic movie, alone in a hotel room during one of her long business trips. There would be a getting-to-know conversation in the cab, coy glances in the check-in line, and then, after they&amp;#039;d been to their respective rooms, they&amp;#039;d meet for a drink in the hotel bar. Drinks would turn into dinner...or maybe just an invitation to come upstairs, so he could, say, show her something on his laptop. Then, in the semidarkness of a strange room, he would grip her shoulders, lightly tracing her lips with one fingertip, before leaning in and kissing her. For a moment, she let herself imagine that it was Tosh in that room...Tosh, and not a stranger; Tosh meeting her at the Four Seasons the night she came back from Paris. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m sorry,&amp;quot; he would say, easing her back on the bed. &amp;quot;I love you,&amp;quot; he&amp;#039;d tell her, his talented fingers working at the hooks and buttons of her clothes. &amp;quot;I want us to be a family again.&amp;quot; Then, without intending it, she found herself thinking of a night with Tosh \u2014 a night without Tosh, really \u2014 three weeks earlier. At 10 o&amp;#039;clock, after Nola had made her requisite three trips downstairs to ask for a drink of water and another kiss and an escort to the potty, Piper had put on her prettiest (and only) negligee, short and white and sheer, with a bodice made of lace panels. In the bedroom where she slept alone, she lit a candle, dimmed the lights, dabbed perfume behind her ears, and called down to the basement, telling Tosh that the toilet was clogged (a terrible pretext, but the best she&amp;#039;d been able to think of at the time). He&amp;#039;d come plodding up the two flights of stairs, eyes downcast, face set in tense lines, carrying the plunger. She&amp;#039;d been waiting by the door. He&amp;#039;d pushed right past her, into the bathroom, where he&amp;#039;d flushed the toilet twice and said, &amp;quot;It seems fine to me.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Tosh,&amp;quot; she&amp;#039;d called, hopelessly, helplessly, at his departing back. He hadn&amp;#039;t even turned around. &amp;quot;Dump some Clorox in the bowl if it&amp;#039;s still slow,&amp;quot; he&amp;#039;d said, and closed the bedroom door behind him. He didn&amp;#039;t want her. She hadn&amp;#039;t been willing to acknowledge it at the time. She&amp;#039;d told herself that he was preoccupied, that he was disappointed about losing his job, that he was possibly even depressed. She&amp;#039;d taken off her silly, frilly white nightgown, pulled on sweatpants and a T-shirt, and spent the next hour online, researching therapists who specialized in treating artists and other creative types, printing out a list and leaving it on the breakfast table the next morning, when the truth was, Tosh wasn&amp;#039;t depressed...or if he was, it was his problem. He didn&amp;#039;t need a therapist...or, at least, he didn&amp;#039;t need Piper to find him one. Tosh didn&amp;#039;t love her anymore. He&amp;#039;d told her in words, he&amp;#039;d told her in deeds, he&amp;#039;d told her when he&amp;#039;d moved all of his books and clothing to the basement, when he&amp;#039;d refused to help her plan a family vacation, when he&amp;#039;d let her take Nola to the zoo and the children&amp;#039;s museum by herself on Sunday afternoons, ostensibly so he could work, but now it was as obvious as a slap in the face, as clear as a cloud of ash darkening the Parisian sky. Tosh doesn&amp;#039;t love me anymore, she thought...and then, fast on the heels of that thought came another, a black cloud obscuring her interior horizons:...and maybe he never did. And maybe no one ever will. &amp;quot;So,&amp;quot; said the man sitting beside her in the back seat of a cab that smelled like incense. What was his name? Mike? Matt? No, it was Mark. Mark Bancroft. &amp;quot;Where were you headed before all this?&amp;quot; Instead of answering, she thought about saying, Would you kiss me? Just so I know that someone else, someday, will want to? Then she remembered that annoying sexist stereotype: Women talk. Men do. So when an almost insane impulse struck, Piper followed it, scooting across the seat just as the taxi turned sharply, nearly spilling her into his lap. Mark opened his mouth \u2014 maybe to ask if she was all right \u2014 and she met his lips with her own. At first, his body stiffened, and she steeled herself for the humiliating moment when he&amp;#039;d push her away. Then his body yielded, his lips softened. His long-fingered, ringless left hand reached up to cup her breast, while his right hand pressed at the nape of her neck, urging her against him as they kissed. So different, she marveled. This man, this Mark, had a different body (taller and slimmer than Tosh&amp;#039;s compact, muscular frame), thinner lips, a taste that reminded her of wintergreen LifeSavers. She pressed against him, listening with voluptuous delight as he murmured, &amp;quot;Oh, God,&amp;quot; before reaching for her again. I don&amp;#039;t care, she thought...and she wasn&amp;#039;t thinking of Tosh, of Nola, of her mother, cutting up apple slices and boiling pasta for her daughter&amp;#039;s dinner, not thinking of anything except that she was between. It was as if she were in an elevator, stalled between floors, or on a plane, stuck on the runway. She was nowhere, and she could take what she thought she deserved like it was a package of overpriced nuts from the minibar that someone else would pay for. It doesn&amp;#039;t matter, she thought, and pressed herself against him. They kissed as the cab sped down I-95, and the driver continued to talk, cheerfully, in what Piper thought was French, into his hands-free headset. At some point Mark unhooked her bra and slid his hands up the back of her blouse, stroking her back. The Philadelphia blurring past the cab&amp;#039;s smeared windows seemed like a different city than the one she inhabited, where she&amp;#039;d pushed Nola in her stroller to her pediatrician and her playgroup, where she had a bank and a dentist and a gynecologist and a regular Pilates class, where she had once walked to brunch on sunny Sundays holding her husband&amp;#039;s hand. In this no-place, this between-place, with her rings in her pocket and Tosh&amp;#039;s letter, unopened, in her purse, she could be someone else, or no one at all. Mark&amp;#039;s tongue slipped into her mouth. She gripped his shoulders, fingers grasping the muscles beneath his shirt as the cab turned sharply, then stopped. &amp;quot;Hello, young lovahs!&amp;quot; the driver called. A uniformed doorman said, &amp;quot;Welcome to the Four Seasons,&amp;quot; and swung the cab door open. Piper fumbled with her bra. Mark collected their bags from the cabbie and, with his free hand at the small of her back, led her through the heavy glass doors, held open by more young men in uniforms, like soldiers in some small and fashionable army. &amp;quot;Wait here,&amp;quot; Mark said, settling her into a chair in the marble lobby. His face was flushed, his voice hoarse as a teenager&amp;#039;s. I did that, thought Piper, and instead of feeling sick with guilt, the way she should have been, she smiled. She sat, half-hidden behind a towering floral arrangement, with heavy-headed lilies drooping almost to the ebony marble tabletop, as he went to the desk and made the arrangements. Holding the key card, staring at her unsmilingly, intently, with a look on his face that said, Oh, the things I&amp;#039;m going to do to you, this man, this stranger, stretched out his hand. Piper took it. ARE YOU HOOKED? Piper&amp;#039;s story takes a shocking new turn in Part II of &amp;quot;The Half Life,&amp;quot; coming up in our August issue. In the meantime, you can send friends to redbookmag.com/redhotread to read this installment. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/love-sex/a6295/jennifer-weiner-short-story-about-love/>