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My allegiance was forever shifting between the two, the husband and his invisible wife. Sometimes a tender, mild-mannered client who was especially talented in bed would say his wife denied him and I’d feel so bad for him and so unhappy with her, angry that she was wasting him and hurting his feeli…

I WONDERED ABOUT THE wives, but I wondered about the husbands, too. Some of them had plenty of sex at home. And some had gorgeous wives, young and vibrant wives, at least from what I could see in the images that came up when I googled the man’s name during screening. (Unsolicited, they might show m…

It delighted me to glimpse people’s shadowed spots, the hidden recesses rarely visited even by themselves. I didn’t understand why any wife would want to stay out. Didn’t marrying the man indicate a willingness, if not a desire, to know him completely by sharing these sorts of private proclivities?…

THOUGH ROGER WAS ASSIDUOUSLY honest with me, he didn’t extend the same courtesy to his wife. I wondered about her, as I wondered about most clients’ spouses, with lazy yet broad curiosity. Did the wives permit their husbands’ infidelity while feigning ignorance? Were they relieved to be free from t…

I took pride in being able to endure. I cherished my stubbornness as much as I coveted the money. Maybe that was my talent, my trade secret: that I’d inherited the selfish obstinance of my father. It was how I affirmed and sustained self-respect; I didn’t give up because I didn’t have to. And I was…