The Slip

There you were, celebrating your seventh wedding anniversary in a restaurant uptown. Your wife, who could not have looked better with her freshly cut hair and rose-petal complexion, had been describing her day at school, where she teaches Far East Asian history at one of the city's universities. Not yet 30 and already tenured, she has advanced remarkably fast. You, on the other hand, have lost momentum. You work for one of the big auction houses, an expert in the Chinese department, where you have been ensconced longer than you have been married. The job may appear glamourous, but the pay is a disgrace. You had intended to stay only long enough to learn your trade and develop a rapport with important collectors and dealers. By now you should have established a gallery of your own, you should have been flying to Hong Kong every three or four weeks to buy rare objects. Anniversaries remind you that time does not stand still, even if you do.

But you were not thinking such thoughts as you sat in the restaurant and happily listened to your wife tell you about her day. You had just ordered and were waiting for drinks when you noticed a striking young woman being led by the maître d' to a nearby table. The woman was Thai or possibly Vietnamese. She was alone. She studied the menu for several minutes, and when she finally looked up, her eyes met yours and you knew you had been caught staring. The woman smiled as if amused. You smiled, too, though your smile was different from hers. You felt misunderstood. Granted, the woman was stunning. Her straight black hair framed a face as flawless as a Qing monochrome. But the reason you were staring had less to do with the woman's allure than with how she was dressed. In fact, you had wanted to tell your wife, whose back was to the woman, to turn around and look at that—the celadon-green slip-dress the woman was wearing. The dress was elegant and understated and really quite short, but more to the point, it was identical to your wife's dress. That's right, the same dress, indistinguishable from the one you gave your wife as an anniversary present, the one you bought on impulse and that cost more than a month's rent.

Anyway, your staring had a purpose.

Your wife, meanwhile, had moved on to another topic of conversation. You did not mention the dress. The moment had passed. You listened politely, but as you listened, your gaze imperceptibly shifted. It was quite easy to look at your wife and at the same time to look past her shoulder. You waited for the other woman, the celadon lady, to see you. Contact, even if misunderstood, had already been made, and when her eyes found your own, you smiled. So did she. There, now you had a little game going. You sipped your drink, which had finally arrived, and could not help observing the celadon lady's legs beneath the table. She may not have realized that from your vantage, you could see her dress riding high on her thighs.

"Anyone home?" your wife asked.

"Sorry," you said. "I was thinking about work. Please, go on."

Apparently, there had been an article in the morning paper about the resurgence of necromancy in rural China. This was a subject your wife was familiar with, having lectured on necromancers and their place in the hierarchy of the Han dynasty. Necromancy, she reminded you, for China was your province, too, was an ancient method of forecasting the future. You nodded and meant to pay closer attention, but as fate would have it, the celadon lady crossed her legs and her dress drifted higher. This may not have been the most comfortable position, for almost immediately, she uncrossed her legs and the dress shot higher still and your eyes widened.

You were delighted with the view, yet at the same time felt unsettled. The celadon lady seemed to be exposing herself to you. Might this have been accidental? You thought not. She was showing too much in too calculated a way. You did not know whether to look into her eyes or to peek at her long legs. In either case, she had you.

But you did not have her. The notion came to you that you were being challenged. You might possess the celadon lady if only you could figure out how to get her. When you were certain you had her eye, you gestured, ever so slightly, with your head. Your gesture said, Meet me over there.

You told your wife you would be right back, that you had to use the bathroom. You walked toward the bar, turned left and headed down the corridor to the lavatory. Any second now, you would hear the celadon lady's heels clicking on the hardwood floor. This is crazy, you thought, but you were grinning.

Five minutes later, your buoyant mood had taken on ballast. The woman had not materialized and your hopes were fading fast. Would your hands never touch what your eyes had seen? Would your lips never kiss the delicate fold between the celadon lady's legs? Something had gone wrong. Why, you wondered, would she display herself in such a provocative fashion, only to leave you stranded in a dark corridor beside a bathroom door? Maybe she had been annoyed that your wife wore a dress that was identical to her own. Or maybe there had been a misunderstanding.

Minutes passed and you remembered with sudden panic that your wife was waiting. It was then that a wave of shame passed through you. Here you had been perfectly content with the woman you married on this date seven years ago, an accomplished woman who also happened to be attractive and stylish in her own right. A stranger appeared from out of nowhere, an Asian beauty who may or may not have deliberately hiked her dress, and your brain got an erection, you lost your head.

So you returned to your table, chastened by your bad behavior. The celadon lady could have stood on top of her chair and pulled up her dress to her throat and you would not have risen to the occasion. You felt dead down below. You felt dead all over.

It is your wife who brings you back to life, an hour later, in the seclusion of your apartment. Perfumed and eager, she leads you to bed and slips the knot from your tie with a practiced hand. You unzip her dress and gather her in, your face nuzzled in the soft fleshy pocket between her neck and shoulder. You are already forgetting the celadon lady. Here in the bedroom you begin again, and by caressing the familiar, you find what you had never lost.