Dan wondered. If Christine had been assigned to him instead of Katie, would he be falling for her? Was he that emotionally unstable? He snickered bitterly. No, as attractive and almost painfully beautiful as Christine was, and as drawn to her as he certainly was physically, there was something very different, very special about Katie that had resonated with him from the first day he’d met her. He could not say what, exactly. She was certainly not the raging beauty that Christine was, though she was a lovely young woman in her own right. She was not even as beautiful as his . . . as Lisa was, not even close in his eyes. And yet . . .

“What are you snickering at over there,” Katie asked. He’d almost forgotten she was still in the office, sitting at her desk, looking at the data entry screen he’d created.

“Just lost in my own thoughts,” he said.

“Thinking about Linda huh?”

“No.” He lied.

“You lie like a dog,” she said, then gave her trademark giggle, like the lovely tinkling of bells.

“So, you’re a mind reader now?”

“No. But I don’t need to be. You’re easy to read.”

“As transparent as the wind and as vacuous as interstellar space,” he sighed.

“No. Just easy to read—at least for me. You want to tell me what happened between you and Linda?”

“Nothing happened.”

“I bet.” She said, very serious but staring at the empty data entry screen rather than facing him. “So,” she persisted, “Whose idea was it? The breakup?”

“Hers,” Dan admitted. “But I would have broken it off anyway.” He added.

“What did you do?”

“Nothing.”

“So after seven years she breaks it off for the second time for no reason?”

“She had a reason.”

“Which was?”

“None of your business.” He said, not unkindly.

“Are you sure?” She asked in a low voice. That threw him for a loop. Did she know? She couldn’t know. What did she mean by that? Was it just that she thought it her business because she was concerned? Wanted to help?

“Stop torturing me,” he thought but said nothing.

“Well?”

“What do you want from me, Katie? What possible difference does the reason make?”

“Just tell me.” She pleaded.

“You’re the mind reader. Figure it out.”

“Is it the same problem as before?”

There it was. She did know. He said nothing for long moments. Then he asked, “What makes you say that?”

“Because a girl who sticks by you for seven years is not going to cut you lose over nothing,” she said, finally turning to face him. “And you’re not someone who would cheat on her, so it has to be that other thing.”

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“What other thing?”

“You know. The same as before—a worse betrayal. You love someone else.”

Dan said nothing, his mind racing nowhere and everywhere at once.

“So, who is it?” She asked after a long pause.

“What’s the difference?”

“It matters who. Same person as before? That would be the best scenario.”

“No. And why would that be the best scenario?”

“Because it would make you less fickle.”

And there it was. The truth. The unvarnished, terrible, painful, irrefutable truth.

Tears welled up in his eyes as he could not mount an honest defense. They ran down both cheeks as she looked into his eyes with an almost unbearable sadness and pain.

“Are you fickle, Daniel?” She asked, head slightly tilted to her right.

“No. Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Why did you fall out of love with that other woman the last time?”

“I didn’t fall out of love,” he said.

“Then why did you go back to Linda?”

“Because I love her, and the other situation was . . . impossible.”

“Why impossible? She didn’t love you?”

“She loved me. But there are many types of love. I don’t know how she loved me or if she could love me the way I loved her and did not pursue the matter until it was too late.”

“Because you were with Linda?”

“Yes.”

“But you loved this other person—were in love with her?”

“Yes, all right? Yes. I fell in love with someone else and chose to stay with Linda for a lot of reasons that are complicated and I’m not going to go into.”

“What if you had it to do over again?”

“What do you mean?” he asked, stalling.

“What if you could go back before it was too late? What would you do?”

“I would break up with Linda and pursue that other person.”

“Even though you did not know how she loved you or how she could love you?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“How do you know?”

“Because you can’t be in love with two people at the same time. You can love two people at the same time. You can lust after two people, or two hundred people at the same time. But you can’t be in love with two people at the same time. So that means I love Linda—very, very much, much more than my own miserable life—but probably was not in love with her. There. Are you happy now?” His tears kept flowing freely from a mixture of powerful emotions quickly spinning out of control: guilt, fear, anger, regret, pain—above all, pain.

“Thought so.”

“What?” he asked, flicking his tears away with both thumbs simultaneously and struggling to regain control.

“You’re not fickle.”

“Of course, I am—what else do you call someone who twice falls in love with people outside of his committed, loving long-term relationship?”

“Lost. Sad. Immature. Stupid. Loyal. Probably a lot of other things, but not fickle. Not when you know you can’t be in love with two people at once—and you can’t fall in love if you’re already in love.—really in love” she said, still sadly, but not unkindly.

“So how does this other person feel about you.”

“Don’t know.”

“Are you going to try to find out, or do a repeat of Act I?”

Before he could answer, there was a knock at the door. Now he knew how Coleridge must have felt when some idiot knocked on his door and made him completely lose the inspired flow to his Kubla Khan poem. Christine entered, reporting for work. Katie tactfully shooed her out the door to show her the “library” they were to work with, leaving Dan alone for some 20 minutes before they returned carrying two piles of books. They had decided to start with the Business English tomes as it was a manageable pile. They alphabetized the pile, and Katie told Christine to go back and start working on finding all of the computer-related books and start alphabetizing them at the closet—something that should take her at least a half hour. Meantime she would work with Dan to build the database.

As Christine closed the door behind her, Katie asked, “You all right?”

“I’ve been better, but I’ll live.”

“So did you lust after the first person?”

“Not in the way you mean. I’ve lusted after a lot of women. Maybe someday I’ll tell you about a recent subway ride I had.” He laughed, but it came out a whimper. “Sex is wonderful, and I like it at least as much as the next guy. I was very attracted to her and of course found her physically attractive but did not lust after her. I’d never confuse lust with love.”

“What about this new person?” she asked.

“Same answer.”

“So, are you going to go for Act II?”

“You’re the mind reader, you tell me.”

“All right. Come here a minute.”

He got up and went to stand before her. She looked into his eyes for a long time, then put her arms around his neck, got on her tippy toes, pulled him towards her and gave him a long, soft, lingering kiss. He put his arms around her, holding tight for a long, long moment that he hoped would last a lifetime.