At first, when Kim confessed that she'd betrayed him — that she'd revealed his deep, dark, dirty secret to the sister-in-law — he couldn't quite grasp it. He got the words, but not the danger. Soon enough though, the wheels of his second-generation survivor brain were churning.

"So you told her about a relationship in the past. What do I care?" he said. There was the reptilian instinct. Strike first or be stricken.

In that instant, Phillip had consigned their two-and-a-half-year relationship to the past. The speed with which he'd rewritten history reminded her of their vacation in Block Island. He was on the phone with his parents (he'd told them he was away on business) and she, just to keep things interesting, had made noises in the background.

When he hung up, he'd said that had they asked him about the noises, he would have attributed them to the cleaning woman. Cleaning woman, housekeeper, girlfriend, whore. They were interchangeable in his mind anyway, so it would have been the kind of lie that belies a deeper truth.

Phillip had been back in Israel for less than two months, but already he had forgotten that he liked her. "This is my real life," he'd said less than a week after his return. "I am the father of the groom. I need to be there for my family now." And then he'd frozen her out for days and days at a time.

She'd discounted his distancing behavior as long as she could, well past the point of reason, and then she snapped. It might not have been this particular weekend. It might have been a different one. But it was inevitable that sooner or later she would snap. He'd pulled the strings that taut.

She dialed the sister-in-law's number, heard her voice and hung up. Then she called Phillip again. They'd spoken ten minutes before. He'd gone into a tunnel and they'd lost the signal. "We're breaking up," he'd said, delighting in the double entendre.

When he was sure to be out of the tunnel, she'd called back several times, but he didn't pick up and he didn't pick up and he didn't pick up. And then she'd called Catherine, the sister-in-law, a second time.

"Hi," she said. "This is Kim. I don't know if you'll remember me, but I met you with Phillip. Before he went back to Israel?"

"Oh, sure. I remember. How are you?"

"Good. Fine. You?"

"You're sure you're okay? You sound a little down or something."

"No, no. I'm fine. I just. . . ."

"I didn't realize you had my number."

"Phillip gave it to me."

"He did? I wonder why."

"Can't tell you."

"Look, I've got company now, but let me get a pen. I'll write down your number and give you a call you later. Okay?"

Catherine put the phone down and Kim considered hanging up. She could still do damage control, but she didn't hang up. She was too far into it now. She pictured Catherine with freshly washed blonde hair grazing her shoulders, tight-fitting jeans and top. Catherine was the crown jewel, the beautiful, sexy gentile in Phillip's tres Jewish family.

"Hi, I'm back," Catherine said a moment later.

They'd both had time to think.

"Are you sure you're okay? You don't sound like yourself."

"Really, I'm fine. You know I've thought about you many times since we met. I've thought of calling you, that is. But I knew that it would be the end of my relationship with Phillip if I did." She'd blurted it out before Catherine had a chance to decide if she did or didn't want to know why Kim was calling.

She'd used the word that Phillip had refused to use when he'd introduced her to Mark and Catherine less than two months before. Not, "This is the woman I'm seeing." Not, "This is my girlfriend." Not, "This is the woman I love." Just, "This is Kim."

"Oh," Catherine said. "I see. Maybe this isn't a good idea. I mean I'm not so sure I really want to be in the middle of this."

"No, of course not. Why would you? I really just wondered who you thought I was when we met. I mean you assumed that Phillip and I were in a relationship, right?"

"I figured there was something."

"Right. There was something. For two-and-a-half years there was something. But Phillip was too ashamed to tell anyone about me."

"You know I think I need to get back to my guests."

"Right. I'm sorry to bother you."

"Look. I need to think about this. I'll call you later."

Though it was a crazy idea, Kim had let herself believe that Catherine would one day get drunk enough at one of the innumerable family functions that she, the dirty secret, would never be invited to, to reveal to Phillip's parents that Phillip, their first son, the pious Orthodox Jew who separates his meats from his dairies, had been cheating on his wife for years, long before they were separated.

It was midnight her time, 7:00 a.m. his, when Phillip finally resurfaced. "Gee, I guess you're still out on the town. Sorry I missed you. I'll try again later."

She fumbled with the phone but the answering machine had already clicked off by the time she got to it.

It was hours since she'd first tried to reach him. She'd imagined that the sister-in-law would have told him about her call by then, but it was clear from his message that she hadn't. He was still making asinine jokes about the nonexistent other men she was seeing. Even in her half-awake state, she heard the projection. The hope that she was out cavorting, so he could feel less guilty about his own bad behavior. They'd had a long-distance relationship for years, for all the time he was pulling away from his wife, but now suddenly the distance was more than he could — or would — negotiate.

Kim fished Phillip's number out of her purse and, fingers shaking, dialed the international exchange and then all the other numbers she'd never bothered to commit to memory.

The piece of paper with his various numbers — office, home, ex-home — was torn and taped back together and torn again from all the times she'd decided to banish him from her life and then reneged on that resolve. Diligently, she'd fish the scraps out of the wastebasket and carefully piece them back together again, wondering why she was so incapable of holding the truth — that she was dating a married man who'd cheated on his wife before he was separated, and would cheat on her as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

"Hello." He had his early-morning-I've-just-popped-my-meds-voice.

"Hi," she said.

"Oh, hi. How are you?"

"Phillip, I have to tell you something," she said and then she did. She confessed her treachery.

"I called Catherine. I told her about us," she said.

There was silence at the other end, and Kim held herself, afraid to breathe, waiting for Phillip to say something. And then finally he did.

"So you told her about a relationship in the past. What do I care?"

"I'm sorry. It was pathetic and crazy, I know. But I called you a thousand times on Saturday and then again on Sunday. You disappeared. We spoke for two minutes and then you disappeared. I kept calling but I couldn't get through." Her ear stung and she realized that she'd been pressing the receiver into it as if her life depended on it.

In the past, Kim had joked about telling Catherine about their relationship. She'd allowed herself to imagine that it would solve their problem if the secret was finally out. But then it had stopped being a joke.

"I don't think the two of us have much in common," Phillip said. "I mean we both like shopping, but other than that, I can't see how you'd get much out of talking to Catherine."

There was the iciness. The superiority. The utter conviction that there is no foxhole he can't get out of. "You can at least feel empowered in knowing that you ended it."

"No," Kim said. "I didn't end it. You took a machete to it. You destroyed it. You win." She tried to calm her breathing. He could push her away now that the hard work of separating from his wife was done. But she could exact revenge.

"When I realized that I would never introduce you to my parents, I also realized that I would never make a serious commitment to you," he said. She focused on her image of him, his head covered with a baseball cap, a closet religious fanatic in a land where religious equals right-wing war monger, whittling away at his mangled thumbnail with a furious forefinger.

"Of course not, how could you let your parents in on the truth of who you really are? Why you're not yet 53," she said.

She eased the receiver from her ear, but still it stung.

It occurred to her that he'd never once called her a bitch, though in relationship to him she'd become one. Whatever else he may have done to hurt her, he'd never dismissed her in that way.

"Phillip, I would have done anything for you."

"Right, like meet me in England, for example? You couldn't even do that. Not unless I paid the airfare."

She let the air she'd been holding in out. "You demean yourself. And you demean me. You demean the very possibility of being human."

"You really should have been a reform Rabbi," he said. "Women can do that now, you know. And you give such good sermons."

Kim switched the receiver to the other ear, cradled it between her neck and collarbone, fished a cigarette out of the almost-empty pack and lit it with her free hand. "Phillip, I loved you. And at least for a time, you loved me."

"Right. Past tense. Loved."

"What are you so afraid of? Do you really think that your parents care who you sleep with?"

"Look, I can't have this conversation. You called my sister-in-law. You broke the rules. Now it's over," he said, and then the line went dead. She stubbed out her cigarette, and lit another one, and felt the shame that he should have felt.

Where other people have emotions, Phillip has rules. But there aren't rules for everything. She believes that there will come a time when he simply misses her. When he knows what she knows. That he threw away his shot at love. But he is light years from knowing that now.

He thinks that the rules are made for other people. Transgression is his specialty, his special joy. Now that he is separated from his wife and truly free to date other women, the thrill is gone. He wants his Orthodox wife back, and perhaps she'll have him.

Later, when the thrill of having her back has worn off, he will have to find new ways to transgress. In dreams, he has flirted with homosexuality. Perhaps he'll actualize those dreams. He'll fuck other men, or more likely be fucked, and pray to God that no one discovers his new dirty secret. He'll attend his children's weddings, the proper Jew, the father of the groom, and surf the Internet for porn. There will be circumcisions and bar mitzvahs, and an endless string of Sabbaths to define his weeks. But when the sun goes down on Saturday night, he'll begin to prowl again. Maybe for pussy. Maybe for cock. Maybe both. Meat and dairy. Kosher and traef.

But she knows that before he nods off from the alcohol, on the verge of consciousness and unconsciousness, he will miss her. He will miss the gentle self he was able to be with her before the demons of shame took over. He will miss their lovemaking and their laughter, their stupefied delight at finding love again, after so many years without.