a few blocks away. Single, roughly the same age as he, Phyllis never missed an opportunity to flirt with him. Andrew liked her: liked her irreverent take on modern art, about which she was an expert; liked her cavalier attitude toward the university bureaucracy; liked the easy rapport she had with her students—“her children,” as she called them. He also liked her flirting. Much as he loved her, Katerina didn't have a seductive bone in her entire elegantly trim body. Phyllis was a walking embodiment of eroticism, squeezed into a small but lush package.
The light changed, but he didn't cross. He thought briefly of giving Phyllis a jaunty, deflecting response. Instead, he turned toward his friend and said, “Kat's left me.”
The woman hesitated a moment, then slid her arms around him and gave him a warm, full-body hug. Then she stood back, shook her mane of henna-tinted hair, flashed him a dazzling smile, and said, “Well now, this is my lucky day!”
Andrew laughed in spite of himself, and they crossed the street.
Phyllis slipped her arm in his and said, “How about we two go for a walk?”
“Sure,” Andrew replied, but without much enthusiasm.
She steered him east toward the river. They walked slowly, Phyllis, in her customary three-inch heels, gracefully picking her way along the uneven brick sidewalk. They'd reached Washington Square and were taking a turn around Independence Hall when she said, “You might as well hear this from me, ducks: not many people are going to be surprised by your news.” She hugged his arm.
“No, apparently I haven't been a particularly satisfactory husband. That's what Katerina says, anyway.”
“That's bullshit, for starters. For Christ's sake, Stratton, you're a first-class gent; and anyway, the affair's been going on for months. She hasn't exactly been discreet about it.”
Andrew stopped dead in the middle of the street and stared at her.
“Affair?”
Phyllis blanched and clapped a hand over her mouth.
“Oh my God! You don't know, do you?” She sounded like someone being strangled.
In a moment, she recovered and tugged him to a bench. There were tourists everywhere.
“Look, it's a guy she met at the climbing gym,” she whispered, “a fat-cat lawyer. That's what I hear, anyway. Somebody saw them playing kissyface outside the art museum a few weeks ago.”
She took one of his hands in both of hers. “Oh, ducks, I'm so sorry.…”
He looked around the square. He'd always loved the old colonial part of Philadelphia—the brick, the stone, the history. But none of it gave him comfort on this day.
Phyllis leaned across the bench and kissed him on the cheek, then pulled him to his feet. “Come on, you; I have an idea. I see you've got goodies, most notably wine, in that shopping bag. We're going to my place.”
Andrew didn't resist. Like an automaton, he followed the rhythmic click of her heels on the bricks. He glanced behind him and was surprised he wasn't trailing blood.
Phyllis Lieberman's elegant apartment on Spruce Street had the same sensual warmth as the woman herself. The walls in the foyer and the living room were painted the color of antique gold leaf. The plush upholstered couch and chairs were covered in thick, ivory linen and scattered with ornate pillows in black, chocolate, and leopard-skin prints. Gauzy white linen drapes pooled on the polished pine floors like trains on bridal gowns. A fan of the American Impressionists, she had a limpid Childe Hassam seascape in a thick gold frame above the black marble Victorian mantel opposite the couch. He couldn't imagine how she'd afforded it. The only primary color in the place was a huge vase of scarlet-tipped lilies on a glass-topped coffee table, so thick with fragrance you almost felt drugged. There was a zebra-skin rug beneath the coffee table.
She led him into an all-white kitchen.
“Sit,” Phyllis commanded, gesturing to a stool beneath a marble counter. She laid out the smoked meats, added a sliced baguette and some cheese, then pulled the cork on the first bottle of Shiraz. She filled two big balloon glasses almost to the lip, and then leaned across the counter, deliberately displaying the very generous cleavage revealed by her scoop-necked, black silk T-shirt. “Here is how we are going to spend the afternoon, mister. I am going to feed you with your own food and ply you with your own wine and you will become happy. There will be no arguing about this. You will remember this day as one filled with love, not loss.” She flashed him an utterly lascivious