There had been a point in their marriage when Tabitha went to the gym with her husband Royal Hamilton, but it had been a couple of years since she had mustered enthusiasm for the sweaty morning workouts. She glanced guiltily over to the kitchen counter. He’d left the house before dawn, but just like every morning, he’d filled two insulated mugs for her. Her breakfast, and her morning snack.

“Mental clarity!” She could practically hear his voice now, the edges of his words ringing out in crisp British precision. She had always loved his drive for self-improvement. “In our business, we need to be sharp and focused. One small change in your diet will make a massive change in your physical and mental stamina.”

She popped the lid off the coffee he’d left for her and took a sip. “Sweet mother of misery,” she muttered. Scrunching her face into a grimace, she forced herself to swallow another gulp and then dumped the rest down the drain. It was an abomination, all of it. She didn’t want to think about the cost of that coffee, or the free-range buffalo butter or the imported raw cacao nibs that he ground himself. Royal whizzed it all together and shot it down every morning like a college kid on a dare. She’d deal with a little less mental clarity for just one more day, and get on the health kick with him tomorrow. Tomorrow would be different. She’d drink his buffalo coffee tomorrow, and maybe even go to the gym with him.

She opened the second container and dumped the green smoothie down the drain without even tasting it. Another ungodly amount of money going to waste, this time in the form of organic, locally grown kale, beets, and spirulina, whatever the hell that was. Royal didn’t even add fruit to sweeten the mix. “It’s not supposed to taste good, Tabby,” he’d say. “It’s supposed to be good for you. Food is fuel, and this is optimum fuel. Premium brain and body improvement.”

She poured herself a cup of real coffee, just the way she liked it. Dark roast, a generous splash of heavy cream, a sprinkle of cinnamon on top. She popped a piece of sourdough bread in the toaster and pulled some butter out of the fridge. Not Royal’s disgusting buffalo butter, which he kept in preportioned chunks in the freezer, double wrapped so no flavors could cross-contaminate it. No, she just wanted plain old butter, dripping into the crevices of her toast and slicking her lips the way God intended breakfast.

Royal had left his phone right near the computer on their kitchen table that morning. Tabitha stared at it uncomprehending before she could figure out what it was. Leaving a phone behind was so unlike Royal that she wasn’t entirely sure what she was looking at. He was a model of mastery—over his possessions, his habits, everything. She held the phone in her hand for a minute, flipping it over like a rock she’d found at the beach. It seemed like a strange and mysterious object, one that she’d never had contact with before.

She roused herself from her fascination and set the phone down on the table. She could bring the phone to Royal when she went into the winery this morning. She went back to scrolling Facebook. Over the last couple of years, she had convinced herself this was a pleasant way to spend the morning. But this particular morning, an itchy longing settled inside her. When was the last time they’d had sex before work? For that matter, when was the last time they’d had sex at all? She noticed how many of her friends had posted lovely photos of date nights with their significant others. They all had sex before work, Tabitha decided. She would start waking up earlier to have sex with her husband. It was feasible. If they woke up at four, they could have sex before they went to the gym together, and before they drank buffalo coffee together. Like happy people.

She reconsidered the thought. Four in the morning was awfully early, especially for married sex. This would all change. Someday, their business would be self-sustaining. The winery was on an upswing now; they could both feel it. These were the hard work years. They didn’t have children yet, but there was still time. They didn’t put a whole lot of effort into their house, but there was still time for that, too. Right now, it was all about the business.

When they met, her career was ascendant; his was nearly stratospheric. He liked what he saw in her; she still wasn’t entirely sure why. Men like Royal never dated women like Tabitha. But for whatever reason, he’d snapped her up as head somm at El Zopilote winery and almost as quickly snapped her up to be his wife. Now the winery was one of the best in the state, easily top ten in the country. So they didn’t have time for blissful Facebook pictures like all of her friends? None of their friends owned a business together. None of their friends had the intense work and travel schedule she and Royal kept. Everyone else filtered their pictures; Tabitha knew it was called Fakebook for a reason. She didn’t need to get defensive about their sex life—or lack of it—based on other people’s curated online personas.

Tomorrow, she vowed. She’d wake before dawn and have sex with her husband before he left for the gym. She would be a newer, better version of herself. She’d drink the coffee and the green smoothie after the sex. Willingly, with a smile on her face. Why not? Anything was possible. This new, idealized version of Tabitha that she imagined would not only adore waking up at dawn but also the oily buffalo coffee and kale smoothies.

Not today, though. One more day of a breakfast she liked.

She stopped when she saw that her husband had posted a picture on the winery’s page. It was taken after she left last night, as she was nowhere to be seen in the dimly lit tasting room. Royal must have invited the late guests to the barrel room to try a new bottle after she left work. He held a glass of something inky and red and smirked into the camera. Next to him was a lithe blonde woman Tabitha didn’t recognize, holding the camera at arm’s length and leaning into Royal.

Plum, berry, smoke, and earth. Our new Malbec is perfect for a date night, Royal had written.

Tabitha closed her eyes and thought about that Malbec. The first time she’d tasted it, she thought of the time she’d seen Branford Marsalis at an amphitheater near Seattle after college. She had stretched out a blanket over freshly mown grass, and the smooth saxophone notes washed over her, and she stared up at the inky blue sky. It had seemed like the stars twinkled in time with the jazz music. The wine tasted exactly like that moment.

If it were up to her, she would have named it Marsalis Under the Stars Malbec, and sold it by saying that every mouthful tasted like a saxophone in the night sky. But Royal didn’t like it when she came up with musical descriptions. Completely out of left field, he always said about her ideas. Nobody understands you when you talk like that. That is not remotely how to sell a serious wine.

She scrolled through the comments. He kept up a smart repartee with their clients—the personal touch was part of the appeal of their winery. Most people commented with emojis, thumbs-ups, high fives. Several people asked when it would be released, Tabitha made a mental note to post the release schedule later today.

Delicious, one woman commented, adding several heart emojis for emphasis.

Curious, Tabitha clicked over to her profile. That was, after all, an awful lot of hearts to apply to a glass of wine. The woman who made the multiple-heart comment was the same woman standing next to Royal in the picture. She was, if possible, even more blonde and more lithe in real life than she appeared in a darkened winery. Tabitha kept scrolling. She ran marathons, this delicious, heart-emoji-throwing blonde woman. She had recently gone to Bali with, evidently, nothing but a red bikini. At the top of her feed was the same picture of Royal from the winery, with a different caption: Perfection.

Tabitha clicked back to the winery page and stared at the image again. It wasn’t that unusual for Royal to post pictures of winery guests, or of himself with winery guests. He was attractive and personable, with his charming English accent and those eyes that narrowed when he talked to women. He always seemed to know a secret; that was part of his appeal. The first time she talked to him, Tabitha glanced down to make sure her blouse was buttoned. It had been, but something about his gaze made her feel like he could see right through her clothes.

Considering how much he privately claimed to loathe them, he had an awful lot of pictures of the bachelorettes on his feed. The goddamned bachelorettes were the bane of every winery’s existence. Once a winery was known as a cool destination for a hen party, they couldn’t erase that image. The bachelorettes sucked down all the wine, rarely bought a bottle, and got rowdy with the staff or other guests. Someone—usually the friend who was not chosen as maid of honor—would throw up, and without fail, at least one, but usually more, of the women wound up crying. “Get out the Bimbo Juice,” Royal would mutter when the women walked in, already tipsy from doing shots in the limousine. They weren’t educated enough wine drinkers for him, and he always tried to pass them off to another tasting room employee. But the bachelorettes always found him and took selfies with him. Well, Tabitha supposed, it was only natural. They owned El Zopilote together, but he had always been the face of the winery. And a very handsome face, at that.

But when did bachelorettes get so young?

She had to scroll a long time until she found a picture of herself on the winery’s page, and even then, she was in the background, pulling an empty bottle off the table behind him while he posed with a gaggle of Kim K lookalikes. Tabitha’s eyes lingered on her image. She looked pissed that day, definitely lacking mental clarity. Had someone already thrown up? Why did her thighs look so huge? Was it because she never drank the buffalo coffee?

She stopped drumming her fingers on the keyboard and moved her hand over his phone. Her fingers hesitated only for a moment; then she pushed the ‘on’ button. It isn’t snooping, she told herself. She didn’t know why her heart was fluttering. He knew she had access to all of his files on the computer, including email, and he had access to hers. It had never been a question; they had set it up that way intentionally. Full transparency, necessary for the sake of the business. If, God forbid, something happened to either one of them, the other would need access to all winery records. Not to mention inventory, payroll, scheduling, insurance, and all of the details mandatory to keep a business together. They had divided their duties pretty evenly. To date, she hadn’t had any reason to go into his computer and look anything up. They each stayed in their lane with the business. He did the wine things; she ran the administration. Funny that it had worked out that way, given that they were both master sommeliers and should both be focused full time on wine. Still, someone had to do the finances, and Royal always claimed he hated dealing with numbers.

Tabitha reasoned to herself that the same transparency they had on their computers applied to their phones. Just because she didn’t explicitly have his permission to check, that didn’t mean she couldn’t do it. He wouldn’t have anything to hide, so what was there to worry about?

He had his phone password protected. This is still not snooping, she repeated in her head, even though she couldn’t imagine why he wanted to protect it. Who kept anything valuable on a phone? Did he have business documents? She had every right to look at his business documents. She tried various significant dates—both of their birthdays, their anniversary, their apartment number got her nowhere. She tried some obvious words. WINE. SOMM. He called her Tabby, and she tried all versions of that—TABI, TBBY, TABB. Nothing. She tried his mother’s name, his sister’s name, and multiple variations of the name of their winery: El Zopilote del Mar, the Thief of the Sea. Nothing. She set his phone down and stared at the picture of Royal leaning into the tiny blonde woman.

Tabitha stood again and walked to the kitchen to refill her coffee. Another cup was too much; she could already feel the caffeine coursing through her veins. But she couldn’t think what else to do with her hands. She yanked the belt of her robe more tightly around her middle and sat back down. This was ridiculous. She needed to stop obsessing about his phone and get ready for work.

Tabitha looked again at the picture of Royal. She often thought he looked like a member of the British aristocracy who robbed art museums in his spare time. Classic, fine-boned face, icy blue eyes, and that dark blond hair that he kept shorn close, a jaw line that could cut glass. The Bali-bikini woman leaned into him, a hungry and excited look in her eyes.

Tabitha recognized that look suddenly with a cold sense of familiarity.

She thought about the words he used when they were alone.

COCK.

“You arrogant bastard,” she murmured, trying to make her tone sound friendly and indulgent as she typed the letters in, knowing before she finished that they would open his phone.

She didn’t recognize the name on the first text—Serena without a last name. When a photo of Serena No Last Name’s vagina popped up on his phone, Tabitha jumped back so quickly that she spilled her coffee on her thigh. The burn on her legs matched the burning in her throat, and she slammed the phone on the table, trying to make the picture disappear. It was a perfect pink vagina, waxed smooth, with only a landing strip of hair running upward toward a taut belly. Two delicate fingers with polished red nails were poised on either side of the labia. Tabitha jumped from her seat, clutching her now-empty coffee cup to her chest.

She felt like she’d seen into the throat of a monster and only just escaped with her life. Why did the fingernails have to be blood red? And what were they even doing there? Opening something up? Pushing it closed? Demonstrating relative size?

And who would send something like that to Royal? What on earth was wrong with people? He’d be mortified. His clipped English accent would grow even more pronounced. Royal was the model of a buttoned-up working man. He’d probably died of embarrassment when he saw this picture.

Tabitha caught a glimpse of herself in the hallway mirror and stopped pacing. Her dull blonde hair had gone wild over her head, her face was covered with a fine sheen of sweat, and her cheeks glowed bright red. Her robe had come loose again, and half of her left breast hung out of the gap—why did she even bother with a satin robe? It was useless and impractical.

Royal had given it to her last Christmas. She always thought she loved it.

She went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face, then pulled her hair into a tight ponytail. Had Royal seen that picture? She hadn’t noticed when it had been sent, or if it had already been read when she clicked on it.

She stopped rubbing the towel over her face. Royal checked his phone last thing before bed at night and first thing when he woke every morning.

Why wasn’t it deleted?

What if this was not the only one?

After tucking her breast back into her robe and yanking the belt so hard around her waist that she nearly gagged, Tabitha walked back to the kitchen table, picked up his phone, and typed the word “COCK” again. “You. Arrogant. Bas. Tard,” she muttered, more loudly this time, and with significantly less friendly indulgence.

The vagina appeared on the screen again. That word was now ricocheting across her mind like a cocaine-fueled tennis match. She took a deep breath and examined the sender. She didn’t recognize the name or phone number, and there was no message written with the picture. She started scrolling through the rest of his saved texts. The vagina parade was only interrupted by the occasional breast. Tit, she supposed he’d call it. That was his favorite word for that particular body part, after all.

She knew that about him because she was married to him. That was the type of thing a wife knew about her husband. His favorite nicknames for her body parts.

What a cock.

Her scrolling became clinical; her face barely moved as body part after body part appeared on her screen. She only tilted her head when the camera angled to the side, murmuring the occasional commentary.

He doesn’t even like gingers, you dummy.

Would a manicure kill you?

I mean, you’ll get a rash if you keep doing that.

That G-string makes your ass look— As much as she wanted to be cruel, Tabitha couldn’t complete that comment. The woman in this particular photo lay on her stomach, her eyes wide and her mouth slightly open. She wore a black G-string, and her ass rose from the bed behind her, softly lit by some gauzy light shining down from the heavens above her. Tabitha tried her hardest to come up with the appropriate insult to spit at this woman gazing up at her with hungry, doe-like eyes. But she couldn’t find it. The woman’s ass was a perfect apple shape; her hair was artfully tousled, her lips parted at the stupid angle all men seemed to love. Tabitha could think of no insult against this prize specimen of a human.

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

She looked at the reply, which he’d sent to this woman only last night.

This will have to do until I can see your darling little hedgehog in person again, my sweet little foxette.

Each reply to each naked picture was a repeat of the last. Thank you for the picture of the part of your body that should be covered by a swimsuit, I hope to see it again soon, my sweet little endearment.

Oh, for fox sake.

She counted forty pictures saved in his text messages, going back a full two years, before she stopped herself and set the phone down.

Tabitha began to chew on her inner cheek, a nervous habit Royal hated, but she didn’t try to stop herself, given the circumstance. She needed an outlet for all of the anxious questions in her head. Starting with wondering what kind of man didn’t even bother to erase the evidence of his indiscretions? Why on earth did he keep them all? Did he want her to find them? Did he honestly think she might never accidentally stumble across them?

Was he just stupid?

Which one would she prefer—that she’d married a cheater or an idiot?

She didn’t know which was more humiliating.

Forty pictures, two years. Granted, it was impossible for Tabitha to tell if it was forty different women or if all of the body parts belonged to each other. This could be forty separate affairs or one long affair, with one woman who was very fond of breast implants and dying her pubic hair and waxing every inch of her body bald and changing her contact number. Who could tell these days?

Be generous, Tabitha directed herself. Let’s say it’s twenty women. No, let’s be even more generous. Let’s say ten. Royal Hamilton, her Knight in Shining Armor, had fallen from his noble steed and had had roughly ten affairs over the last two years of their marriage. He had seen—and touched, according to his text commentary—as few as one but as many as forty naked women during a time he was supposed to be seeing and touching only Tabitha.

She sat back in her chair, crossed her arms over her chest, and chewed on her bottom lip. Why she bothered to lower the number for him, she could not figure out. What if it was only one woman? Was that somehow better? Would she forgive him? What if it was two or ten? Did it matter? He’d seen other women naked, and she had not seen any other men naked.

For that matter, she had not been seen naked, even by him, for—how long was it again?

Her crossed leg bounced over her knee, and then she jumped from her chair. Tabitha thought maybe she’d vibrate right out of her body. Her coffee-stained robe had come loose again, and she yanked it off and jammed it into the kitchen trash can, stomping on it with her bare foot. No more satin, she vowed. Not ever. What a stupid, slippery, useless material. Perhaps it would satisfy her to cut it to shreds.

Should she take her scissors to the robe? The idea exhausted her. But what else was there to do?

She paced her bedroom several times, flexing and clenching her hands as she walked. She wondered what it was like to kiss someone new. Despite the ring on his finger, Royal had been kissing lots of women in the last few years.

Maybe he didn’t kiss them. Maybe they only had sex.

She paced more. A familiar adrenaline coursed through her, a sensation she’d kept at bay since she first met him. She’d always thought it was because it was thrilling to have a man like Royal want her.

But that adrenaline coursing through her on their first date wasn’t ecstasy. It was a flight-or-fight response in her body. She should have punched him right in his man-junk, that very first day when she thought he could see through her blouse. Punching him down low would have deprived most of the women in Central California access to his no-goods. Hearts would be broken. But she would have saved her own.

She walked to her closet and slipped on her highest heels. Pradas, the soles as red as that first woman’s bloody fingernails. Black leather, pointed tips, straps that wrapped around her ankles. She’d never worn them in public since she could barely stand upright in them. He bought them for her on Valentine’s Day not long after they were married, and he sometimes asked her to wear them during sex.

Well, if this look was good enough for him, why wouldn’t it be good enough for any red-blooded American male? They all wanted the same thing, evidently. A naked woman, an apple-shaped ass, pubic hair in a strange pattern? That was sexy.

Well, okay then.

Hands on her hips, she stared at her reflection. She’d kept it tight, as the kids liked to say. She didn’t go to the gym with Royal, she didn’t drink his revolting green smoothies, but she rarely got to eat a full meal these days, and still wore the same size jeans she’d worn in high school. Her breasts had drooped a little bit, but nothing obscene. What did he expect?

An apple-shaped ass.

He got to see naked people all the time. Whenever he wanted to, evidently. He had the gall to post flirtatious pictures on Facebook.

One woman or forty women, give or take. No men for her. There was an easy way to balance that spreadsheet.

Just then, the doorbell rang.

“Ha! Spreadsheet!” She cackled as she tripped down the hall, her arms windmilling out to her side so she didn’t fall over. “That’s what she said!”

She stopped in front of the front door. She pulled her hair out of the ponytail and flung the rubber band across the room. Her hair flew wildly around her face, and she whipped her head around to loosen it. She hoped it looked like tousled waves, draping her elegant face. She knew what men liked.

She took a deep breath and opened the door.

Springtime in Central California meant fog-bound mornings that burned off to sunny afternoons and chilly nights. They kept their house warm, she and Royal, sealed up tightly at night to ward off the cold. This time of day it was far cooler outside than it was inside. A crazy thought scooted through her head when she closed her eyes and let her head fall back: there is a metaphor in here somewhere.

The morning air rushed over her body, and her skin puckered with gooseflesh. She felt her nipples harden but resisted the urge to cross her arms over her chest, instead leaving them flung out to her side, Christlike, for Christ’s sake, letting the breeze engulf her. Her head back, she breathed deeply, trying to imagine the erotic picture she must be enacting for her lucky visitor.

There was no sound from the person on her front porch, so after several deep breaths, she lifted her head and opened her eyes. Her mailman, Chuck, stood in front of her, blinking his owl-like eyes behind his thick glasses. Chuck was shaped like an avocado, his large belly tapering up toward his neck.

She wondered how long they would stare at each other. Is this how it starts? Do we just look for a while and then have sex? Do I even want to have sex with Chuck? I never factored in the sex. I only did the math on women Royal has seen. What about women he’s had sex with? How many Chucks does a woodchuck fuck to make the spreadsheet balance?

Chuck cleared his throat. His eyes had never, she noticed, wandered down below her neck.

“Mrs. Hamilton? You feeling okay?”

Tabitha cocked her head to the side and regarded him. How would Royal have responded to her opening their door naked? Did Chuck’s wife ever do things like that? Did Chuck have a laptop full of pictures of other women’s body parts?

She blinked at him now, mirroring his owlish looks, and finally opened her mouth to talk.

“It appears my husband is having forty affairs.”