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 the imposition of sex? At home, did the spouses speak to each other lovingly, touch each other casually? Were they physically affectionate, or was all skin-to-skin contact gone?

Bed death was the excuse offered by clients who felt obligated to explain why they were in a committed relationship and also naked with me, and to their credit it was normally presented with resignation but not accusation or enmity. “We don’t have sex anymore” held both parties responsible—or neither, as if they were just adapting to a circumstantial change, like they’d sold their sailboat or their outdoor cat had gone missing. If there really had been years of little to no erotic intimacy, surely the wives could figure out how the husbands coped. Maybe the wives coped by using adultery, too.