The Amtrak to Providence was much easier than the puddle-jumper flight. At least you kept your shoes on – especially in summer sandals with all those straps to unbuckle and buckle. The seats were comfortable and I decided to read John Updike’s Endpoint. Just this one trip doing something not related to work – just this one time.

There was a seat remaining in a four-seat section. I sat opposite two reasonably attractive women, say somewhere in their late 40s. "All aboard," the conductor shouted several times, warning people of the train’s imminent departure. "All aboard!" he said more seriously. But of course everyone who wished to travel the train was seated and his cries for late passengers fell on an empty platform.

Opposite me the two women were engaged in a delicious conversation. I did my "pretend-read" act displaying deep interest in my book, intently turning the pages that could have been just as well blank. The two women were in the middle of a conversation about adultery and I was transfixed.

WOMAN ONE: Yes … but frankly it wouldn’t matter to me if Chuck screwed around. We’ve been married nearly 30 years and let’s face it, sex is dull. I fake everything and it’s really not that frequent.

WOMAN TWO: How frequent?

WOMAN ONE: The truth?

WOMEN TWO: Of course, Madam Genevieve.

GENEVIEVE: Maybe once a month. Maybe once in two months. Sometimes longer. Who keeps track, Margaret? We’re stuck with each other. Isn’t that what one calls "mature love?"

MARGARET: They say the pheromones wear off and attraction goes out the window.

GENEVIEVE: What’s a phen-a-rome?

MARGARET: A pheromone, not phenarome – it’s a smell – one that attracts the sexes, like beetles, and apes and a man and a woman. It makes them lusty – for a while at least.

GENEVIEVE: Well we ain’t got none, ole Chucky and I. Chuck and I have been with each other since high school. Then it was hot and heavy and panting. Then Chuck had hair. And what about you, Ms. Margaret? Ms. Sexual Silencio?

MARGARET: Boris is just Boris.

GENEVIEVE: What does that mean?

MARGARET: Sex was never the mainstay. He’s a genius, you know. They won’t part with him at Yale. They even matched the Stanford offer.

GENEVIEVE: Boris is certainly smart. No doubt about it. Would you care if he "strayed?"

MARGARET: Boris isn’t the straying type.

GENEVIEVE: Why do you say that?

MARGARET: He’s like a lab rat. He never leaves his research lab.

GENEVIEVE: I guess like Chuck’s addiction to the Red Sox.

MARGARET: At least they’re seasonal. Labs are forever – 24/7. They never close. Boris and I have been married for 27 years in February. Oops. No, no, 28 years in March.

GENEVIEVE: Comme moi and Chuck. Chuck is sweet, you could say. I love him in my own way. Margaret (stretching out her legs), I’m exhausted. Shopping wears me out. Want a coffee? It’s just two cars up.

MARGARET: Yes, yes, coffee.

GENEVIEVE: With what inside?

MARGARET: This time with cream and Sweet & Low. I’m a study in contradictions.

Genevieve gets up and moves, swaying with the train, after taking a bill out of her wallet. She disappears as the electric train door lets her pass through. It closes. Margaret takes her compact and lipstick out of her bag and powders her nose, then rubs a bright pink lipstick over her lips several times – puckering at her reflection. As for me, I am still "pretend reading" when Margaret suddenly reaches for her cell phone and dials. She checks her face in her compact mirror and watches herself as she talks.