2.

ONCE, SHORTLY AFTER MARION AND I GOT MARRIED, WE WENT to a party at Mitch White’s house. It was the only time I was ever there. He lived in the town of Dennis and it was a perfectly nice home, the kind you might see in suburban Boston, with a two-car garage and a manicured lawn. It was not the type of house that could be found on the Cape prior to the latter part of the twentieth century, but Mitch and his wife did not know that.

Mrs. White’s name was Stephanie, a sharp-featured woman who wore pointy eyeglasses and was possibly hiding an impressive figure under a consistently dowdy wardrobe. Like her husband, she was mid-forties and seemed slightly bewildered by the rush of time. She knew things were supposed to be done a certain way and that was the way she did them. Utensils were wrapped in napkins and set out next to a stack of small plates at the end of the dining room table, which was covered with a tablecloth that sported images of lobsters and clams. The real things were not among the array of hors d’oeuvres that were carefully arranged on the table, but the tablecloth images paid homage to their place of origin.

Stephanie, despite her seeming lack of savoir faire, scared a lot of people. She had an edge to her, and while she did not say much, she tended to stare at other people rather intensely, as though she was waiting for some criticism that she knew was probably justified and for which she was already planning a response.

She and Mitch had a son, a broad-shouldered twelve-year-old with a toothy smile. One could only assume that Stephanie had large brothers, because the boy had a lot bigger frame than either of his parents. They dressed him up in a tie and one of Mitch’s short-sleeved white shirts and had him serve nonalcoholic drinks on a tray. There were local wines, one red and one white, but they were on a card table in the backyard and partygoers had to go find those themselves and then pour them into plastic cups.

It was Marion’s first introduction to the attorneys in my office and when they discovered where she worked she became the most popular person at the party. Later, she would tell me she couldn’t understand why I didn’t have more friends among my co-workers. Such fun people, she said, so convivial.

Shortly after 9:00, when Marion had drunk most of what was available to drink and pried herself away from those desperately craving a Boston job with a prestigious law firm, she sidled up to me and asked me to come with her. I had been thinking it was time to leave, but she wanted me to accompany her to the second floor. People had been going up and down the staircase all evening because there was only one bathroom on the first floor and I figured she wanted me to guard the door so she could use the facility upstairs. I didn’t think that was necessary, but I had nothing else to do, so I went.

Once on the second floor, however, Marion wanted me to go into the bathroom with her. She looked up and down the hallway, determined no one was watching, and pulled me by the wrist. “Here,” she said, locking the door behind us. The same look was in her eye that she had shown after she had fooled the cops in Old Town.

“What?” I said, hoping she didn’t really mean it.

She turned, positioned herself over the sink and in front of the mirror. She did not touch the faucets, she just pointed her hands outward, placing one on each side of the sink, and grinned mischievously into the reflecting glass.

When I did not react, she leaned farther forward, moved both hands to her hips, and slowly raised her skirt all the way up until it exposed her ass. She was wearing a satin thong. A skimpy, cherry-colored thong. Her mouth opened, her teeth flashed in the glass. “You like?”

“Marion, we can’t do that in here.” But I was staring at the thong, the way it disappeared between the rounded mounds of flesh.

“Fucking in your boss’s house,” she whispered hoarsely, looking over her shoulder. “What could be better?”

“Put your skirt down, Marion.” But I was still looking at her ass, still imagining where that tiny piece of cloth was going.

“Come on, Georgie—it will be fun.” She leaned even farther forward. She began to grind her hips one way and then another.

“Jesus, Marion,” I said, my heart beating, sweat forming on my lip. “Get dressed. I’ve got to work with these people.” I put my hand on the door handle, looked into the mirror, and saw the disappointment on her face.

It was, I recalled as I sat on the hillside above the Middle Fork of the Salmon River, the beginning of the end for my wife and me.